Youth in Agriculture

YOUTH IN AGRIBUSINESS

Because the future of farming belongs to the next generation!

INTRODUCTION

We are happy to present you this Agriterra “Youth in Agribusiness” information magazine!

Over the past years we have been working on the development and implementation of "Youth in Agribusiness"; a programme that aims to enhance and promote youth participation in agricultural cooperatives. This includes capacity building, awareness raising, facilitating a dialogue between generations, youth activation and training youth in leadership skills.

Youth participation is key in sustaining the future of farmer organisations, cooperatives, agribusinesses and the agricultural sector as a whole. More and more, the board and management of cooperatives are aware that if they want to safeguard their achievements from the past, investing in the farmers of the future is crucial.

This magazine gives insight into what Agriterra has to offer cooperatives and farmer organisations with regards to youth activation.

Have fun with attracting, including, training and mentoring youth within your cooperative!

Nicole en Jeske

Agriterra is an agri-agency founded and steered by the farmers’ organisations and agricultural cooperatives in the Netherlands. Its mandate is to strengthen producers’ organisations worldwide. Among other activities it supports cooperative farmer-led economic development in developing countries.

Working with the youth is quite interesting due to the level of energy, innovativeness and the willingness to try out things. There is a big opportunity for cooperatives and farmer organisations to tap into this energy, vibrancy, innovation and knowledge of the youth for sustainable transformation of agri food systems and rural economic development.

On the other hand, Agriterra's Youth in Agribusiness programme offers an opportunity for the young farmers to share their ideas, raise their concerns, get involved in the organisation and to develop their organising and leadership skills. The young farmers get an opportunity to experiment and try out new ideas and innovations linked their organisation.”

MaryMuthoni Youth Trainer Kenia

WHY INVOLVE YOUTH?

Every cooperative or farmer organisation needs a strategy for the future. They have to recruit and train new generations of members and board members. Young people bring new ideas, new networks and ways of working that can give cooperatives a bright future. Youth participation is key to a sustainable future for agriculture and cooperatives. More and more, the board and management of cooperatives are aware that if they want to safeguard their achievements from the past, investment in the farmers of the future is key.

This is acknowledged by cooperatives that have been participating in the Kick-Off Workshop for youth participation of Agriterra.

Their main reasons for increasing youth involvement?

· To be able to sustain the cooperative in the future

· Because the youth are energetic, fresh minded and full of new ideas

· To shape the future leaders of the cooperative

· Offering youth opportunities to use their education

· Further developing the cooperative business

And there is much more!

It’s important that we involve youth as much as we can in cooperatives, because the youth of today are the members of tomorrow. As an Agripool expert, I went to Ethiopia for a Kick-Off Workshop Youth. We helped the youth and cooperatives in exploring how to set up new and viable business

Let's spark the change together! When you are thinking about how to start with youth participation, it is important to ask yourself a couple of questions.

Here are some examples:

· Why do you want to increase the number of youth in your organisation?

· How many of your current members are young farmers (< 35 years of age)?

Jeske de Kort Trainer and Facilitator at Juntos

· What is the current status on youth involvement? Is youth already active? If yes, how many youths are active and in which way?

· What is your main challenge related to youth involvement?

· What does the board/management want the youth to do? And what not (yet)?

· Is the board and management really willing to give youth space to create their own groups, projects, be representative in the board? Are the youth allowed to learn (make mistakes)?

· We expect the older people to act as a mentor for the youth. Is this possible for you?

· Are you aware youth participation is not a short-term activity, but a long-term trajectory? It’s just the start of many new ideas and possibilities!

Are you ready for the future?

Agriterra would love to support you! We offer tools, products, advice and services designed to accelerate youth participation, by championing an enabling environment and creating space for youth.

WHAT CAN YOUTH

If you have decided that you want to work with youth it is time to start thinking about what youth can do There are thousands of possibilities; maybe you want their expertise on certain subjects, or you might be looking for some extra hands on the field, or you could give the youth space to create their own projects and hopefully even new jobs!

You might want to create a youth council and give young people the opportunity to influence policies and learn how to advocate for their needs, or maybe you want them to improve the way of working in the cooperative, develop and train them or have them available to give trainings. Another option could be that you want them to promote agriculture and your cooperative.

You can think about what youth can do in your cooperative and ask them what they want to put their energy in. To give you some inspiration and examples, we will share with you what we have discovered after years of giving youth workshops. In general, youngsters and their mentors are very keen on to organise activities that can be divided into 4 categories.

Youth in Farming

Mobilise young farmers to join the coop

· Create moments to meet and interact with young farmers

· Create awareness of importance of farming and benefits for youths within a cooperative

· Be a role model and show examples of what other youth have achieved

· Actively involve children of farmers in farming, production and within the coop

· Explain why paying membership fees and buying input supplies helps farmers and coops

Change mindset and perception of youth

· Create moments to meet and interact with young farmers (option: invite experts)

· Mentor new members of cooperative

· Organise farm visits & field days

· Keeping up and sharing a positive image and pride of the cooperative

Work on a positive pr of agriculture

· Teach youth that agriculture is business

· Mobilisation of youngsters to become farmers

Lobby4Youth

Create (job) opportunities

· Lobby and convince stakeholders of other land-use policies in favour of the new generation and to enhance youth’s opportunities

· Employment opportunities for youth

· Provide services on behalf of the coop

· Create paid advice/ training/ work within other organisations who want to work with young farmers

Lobby to get your own farm

· Changing the process of farm take-over and inheritance: mutual trust & learning

· Support with farm succession

· Create possibilities within politics and loans for young farmers

Share ideas, express views and give advice to the board on several topics which matter for the cooperative

· Participate in decision making (create leadership positions and roles for youth)

· Contribute to the core business of the cooperative (taking into account its mission, vision and BHAG)

· Realise new activities based on needs

· Identify projects that will help the cooperative

Create strong coops, with all members

· Improve the trust and transparency within the cooperative by explaining and showing the flow of money

· Improve cooperative management

· Invest in communication with the members (not only youth). Show farmers the cooperative benefits

· Improve accountability of and towards the community for production

Improve marketing and communication

· Improve communication and flow of information within the cooperative

· Help cooperative to use modern means of communication

· Improve the marketing of the coop.

working

· Help the cooperative to increase the production and ensure effective collection of the product

· Create innovative and new ideas for cooperative

· Involve members in value addition to get higher profits and benefits for members

· Think about how you can add value to a product to increase income (e.g., not only grow coffee beans, but also roast them and learn barista skills to sell the end product with a mark-up)

Innovation through technology

· Search for new technologies which can improve production

· Train farmers on technical knowledge

· Stimulate young lead farmers initiatives to adopt technology for improving farm practices

· Organise knowledge sharing (not only for youth) in meetings and trainings

Research

· Stimulate research and data collection and use it for the cooperative and individual farmers

· Help to access date market information.

· Active research to improve income for the cooperative and its members and to get to know opportunities in the market

SPARK THE CHANGE

Do you want to work with youth? From our experience, we can tell that a facilitating environment is key to youth participation. At Agriterra, we have the experience and knowledge to assist you in creating space for youth. To give you some inspiration, we collected the best tips & tricks that participants of our Kick-Off Workshop came up with. We love to share them with you!

· Show inspirational examples of young farmers on social media

· Create projects especially for the youth

· Offer trainings and exchange visits

· Nurture the youth who are already there and use them as an example

· Give presentations about your cooperatives at agricultural schools and farmers meetings

· Organise an event like a sports tournament, a marketing event, meet & greet or online sessions with succesful entrepreneurs and peers from other regions or countries

· When the older generation fears to give the youth opportunities in leadership, take small steps and show these steps

· Train the youth to become extension officers for the cooperative.

· Show examples of what other youth have achieved

· Mobilise young farmers to join cooperative (how)

· Create moments to meet and interact with young farmers, learn about what they need

· Organise farm visits & field days

· Be a role model for other members (increasing production, achieving goals) and show them how you do it

· Keeping up and sharing a positive image and pride of the cooperative

· Work on a positive promotion of agriculture

· Show youth that agriculture is a business

OUR BASIC PRINCIPLES

In our Youth in Agribusiness Programme, we work with the following principles:

· Creating space for youth

· Touching over teaching

· (Facilitative) leadership

· Peer-2-Peer approach

· Continuous learning

· Putting words into action

· Involvement and connection with the cooperative.

· Ask youth what they want & why

· Start with short term projects

· Start small

· Give space to make mistakes

· Ask questions instead of telling them what to do

· Use role models

· Work with those who are willing

· Organise interactive meetings

· Help youth to think in possibilities

· Ask youth to be involved because of their skills

· Have fun!

YOUNG LEADERS

“I am a veterinary and also a youth leader in my cooperative called Chepkorio Dairy. Since the day we launched the youth council in my cooperative, I have managed to lobby for the recognition and involvement of youth in the leadership of our coop. For over three years, youth have been working hand in hand with the leaders of the youth council and milk production have significantly increased. Hence, this have made more and more youth joining farming and have improved their lives."

Jackson Kiprono, 34, Kenya

"I am coordinator of the Youth Technical Group of my cooperative CTCF in Nepal. This group was formed after a joint effort of CTCF and my participation in the Youth Leadership Masterclass 2018. The youth group is a platform for sharing updates, ideas and experiences with regards to youth leadership, tea education, tea cooperatives and many more.

Menuka Pradhan Prasai, 27, Nepal

“ Our cooperative used to consist of three senior delegates. Now, we have five – all young, all members of the Youth Council. Today, someone text me that there is a Women’s Council in the making! Credible leadership goes hand-in-hand with inclusion.”

EricMunene , 34, Kenya

I am from the Philippine and Cum Laude graduated in Marketing studies. I am Cashier at the SorosoroIbaba Development Cooperative (SIDC). College friends they asked me: do you have plans for a better job or position? I tell them: Never ever work just for money. Agriculture is in my blood. I don’t say this to brag, but to pass on a message: If you feel the world is against you, stand up, dress up, show up and never give up. Just continue flying and acting on your dreams.”

LynUntiveros , 24, Philippines

YOUTH IN AGRIBUSINESS

Agriterra’s Youth in Agribusiness programme comprising a variety of possible activities to involve youth. We work with agricultural cooperatives and farmer’s organisations to support them in enhancing youth participation. Every trajectory starts with an intake to collect crucial information about the starting point of the organisation. After the intake you normally start with the Kick-off Workshop Youth, which helps to start creating space for youth, if the youth group afterwards shows some effort into realising their action plans we will help them to reach a next level.

1. Kick-off Youth Workshop

Our Kick-Off Youth Workshop aims to create awareness on youth participation.

It’s the first step to develop a mutual focus between young and older member within a coop. Within this workshop we start to create space for young potentials to start their own, cooperative related, youth activities and projects.

The mixed group of youth and board members get many examples and they develop a SMART action plan to organise their first youth activity or small project from which as well the cooperative as the youth can benefit.

2. Follow-up Youth Workshop

After the kick-off Youth workshop the business advisor stays in contact with the youth group about their progress. Normally we see many groups undertaking action, creating youth councils, projects and possibilities for youngsters to become a farmer. At the same time there are many challenges.

That’s why we bring groups together in Follow-up Youth Workshop to work on next steps, which helps to generate new ideas, energy and action.

In the follow-up, we aim to exchange results, challenges and ideas between the different youth groups. The participants will also learn more about cooperatives and setting up a youth council or group.

Besides they will have a field trip or learn from external speakers (inspiring farmers and projects), so they have a lot of inspiration to create a review their plans.

In most of the trainings we mainly work with the youth, but also want to keep the board members and managers close, because they really need each other and have to be able to understand each other’s path and choices.

Youth groups who started to organise activities, businesses and projects can be offered a Tailormade Youth Workshop. At this point we see that youth groups are starting to head in different directions. That’s why part of this workshop is tailormade, according to the needs of the groups.

In the programme their will be room for exchange of experiences, a field trip, keynote speakers and possible tailormade content can be manure making, business planning, marketing, sustainable farming etc. (Partly based on the other trainings developed by Agriterra.

Youth trainers can organise as often as they see opportunities, it is necessary and there is budget.

4. Youth Leadership Masterclass

To empower the most promising young leaders and role models, we designed the Youth Leadership Masterclass. It can take place on a local, regional or global level It is a training that focuses on entrepreneurship, networking, developing self-awareness, creating focus and much more. Facilitative leadership skills are are also stimulated; meaning they will not only learn how to be a leader, but also how to involve others and take them along on their journey.

Besides the workshops we give, we always have an eye for opportunities for small and big projects related to Youth in Agribusiness. Some examples:

We stimulate that youth groups organise youth exchanges. It helps them to develop their organisational and communication skills. It will also benefit them when it comes to team bonding, creating tangible results and adding value to their young members. We created a “Youth in Agribusiness: Youth Exchanges” information leaflet to help your youth group to organise an exchange.

Agriterra and other partners (Agriprofocus, Dutch government, De Heus, MDF, Fresh Studio, ICCO and East West seeds) bundled their powers to organise a trajectory to boost highpotential youth’s interest in agriculture in Myanmar. They organised a Agrifood bootcamp which covered a four-day programme in which a total of 300 participating students and young professionals learned about the Myanmar agricultural sector, visited several agricultural companies and worked on a challenge.

SUCCESS STORIES

After attending the Kick-Off Workshop, many participants started their own projects, initiated new business models and set up youth councils. From all over the world, we have collected success stories of youth involvement in the form of activities that have taken place, projects that have been implemented, and exchanges and events that have been organised, like soccer tournaments. All these success stories have one thing in common: creating space for youth is the reason why they have emerged and ignited.

A good catch, Congo

When DR Congo was in a lockdown due to Covid-19, Agriterra business advisor Faustin and the managers of 6 rice cooperatives had a phone conversation on youth involvement. The youth had a plan and the managers committed to invest in their plans. A new project was born!

Two months later, 16 youngsters from 6 cooperatives in the Ruzizi plain jointly created a fish farming project. They agreed to a contribution of 5 dollars each to finance the project and every sunday they have a meeting to evaluate their activities. During these meetings, an extra 0,25 dollars each is contributed by each member of the youth group to strengthen their funds.

You may wonder, why fish farming? That is because this area offers two interesting opportunities: it is a good place for fishing ponds and there is a high demand for fish, while the supply lagging behind. Faustin: “They are the children of the cooperative’s farmer members. As they do not have the financial means to pay member contribution, the youth are not members themselves. The cooperative helps them to obtain fish farming materials and makes its office space available for the youth to hold their weekly meetings. In addition, the manager provides advice to the group on their business, as the group still needs training in organisation and doing business.”

Currently, the cooperative does not get anything in return for their investments, in the long-term, the business needs to be professionalized and the youth can help the cooperative with problem solving. They know how to use ICT and social media, which is an opportunity.

One of the managers told he choose to invest in this group of youth because most of them have an educational background in agronomy and he sees potential in them to become an agronomist or accountant within the cooperative. Faustin linked these young people to the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) to purchase small fishes to put in a readily prepared fish pond. It is the financial contributions of the youth that will enable them to purchase the small fish.

Mugisha decided not to apply for jobs in the over-crowded job market, but instead concentrate his efforts on mobilizing fellow youths to gain the much needed skills in the current Ugandan economy.

Rukiga Savings and Credit Cooperative (SACCO), a client of Agriterra, was impressed by Crescent’s idea and granted him with EUR 125 (UGX 500,000) to mobilise fellow youth to engage in skills development. 76 youth were mobilized, and the manager of Rukiga SACCO trained them in financial management.

In 2017, Agriterra together with Rukiga SACCO mobilized the youth to form a Youth Council with meaningful structures within the cooperative. They were tasked, among others, to mobilize other youths to join the savings group and also engage in commercial agriculture. A year later, Rukiga SACCO registered a Youth Producer Cooperative (Kigezi Potato Farmers Cooperative Society Ltd) that is affiliated to Rukiga SACCO. Rukiga SACCO offers affordable credit to the young farmers which was a move in the right direction due to the other challenges the youth faced.

Kigezi Potato Farmers Cooperative Society Ltd has leased 5 acres of land for 10 years (renewable) from the government, and is planning to set up a potato seed multiplication centre. The seed multiplication centre will include a screen house and a 100 metric ton capacity store by 2023. The potato seed will be distributed to the targeted 1,000 Youth for Table Ware production for household food safety and for market for sustainable incomes. At the end of the year, all the profit made from the sale of seeds and table ware will be either shared as dividends or reinvested into the business.

Silage making, Uganda

Bukanga saw there is a low milk production during dry season, due to lack of enough food for the cows, and they want to create sustainable milk production throughout the year. The youth group indicated they want to make silage, to create employment and offer a service to the cooperative and its members. The TIDE project offered to subsidised chaff cutting machines to the youth group and train them in silage making in order to get them started. Of the money brought in, 10% or more will be saved to buy another chaff cutter. They now make silage and sell this in dry seasons, which is a good market. To further develop their ideas, Bukanga was recommended to find a mentor who helps them to make calculations and to create a sustainable (business) plan together. At this moment 50 farmers increased production from 100-150 litres a day.

Youth in dairy make it work, Indonesia

KPSP Saluyu is a dairy cooperative in Indonesia which participated in the Kick-Off Workshop for youth participation in 2019. After the event, Saluyu formally formed their youth council with the purpose to be a channel for young members’ opinions & efforts and to attract more young farmers to the cooperative.

The cooperative started to invite a youth delegation in every board meeting, and the young farmers also started to gather regularly, developed activities an achieved some great successes already. One of these successes was the appointment of former head of the youth council, to Chairman of the cooperatives Supervisory Board. This was a major milestone for the youth development, because this indicated that farmers fully recognized the potential and value of increasing youth participation.

Now the youth of Saluyu is active in different projects:

· Calf rearing programme, to get high-quality & traceable calves. Young farmers act as the executors, breeding and raising high quality calves in their farm. This practice is done in high standard and monitored by senior board members.

· Manure management, Agriterra helped to set up a proper manure management system. The goal is to have at least five manure collection points in each village to do composting (nutrient cycle). In the last assignment on manure management, at least 30 young farmers participated.

· Responding to the fodder crisis, The Covid-19 breakout has caused fodder crisis in Kuningan regency, West Java. The Youth Council of KPSP Saluyu helped the board to mitigate the crisis by setting up corn silage production system. After this they still faced a low milk productivity, so they arranged a monitoring programme to change farmers’ feeding habit.

Free seeds for youth, Kenya

The coffee production in Kenya has been on a downward trend from 130 MT 1987/1988 to current production of 40 MT. This is attributed to by many factors among them ageing population as the average age of a Kenyan coffee farmer is 60 years. Kipkelion wanted to involve young farmers in marketing milled coffee, starting coffee tree nurseries, reaching more members and to lobby for county governmental support. They mobilised over 120 youths at the society level, region level and union level to create a youth council with 9 members who meet every quarter. Young farmers are trained on basic agronomy and they made a plan for a tree nursery to be used by supplying seedlings to new and elderly members. The piece of land is already there and the seeds now need to be purchased.

The union decided to register ‘Kipkelion Union Youth Council’ under the department of social development, which enabled youth council members to gain access to local funds from the county government. The youth council is actively lobbying towards the county government for funding of youth activities. They have already managed to allocate some funds for planting coffee trees. And that is just the beginning!

Youth’s own coffee brand, Rwanda

In 1999, Abakundakawa cooperative was created, legally registered in 2004. From its establishment up to 2018, the cooperative was dominated by old farmers in terms of membership; most of them are the parents of the current active youth, less than 100 youth were members and inactive.

“In the beginning the youth were just enjoying working at cooperative coffee washing stations as casual workers without thinking on possibilities of becoming coffee producers and entrepreneurs. Like many other youths in the world, we wanted only quick wins. We could not imagine how we can invest in coffee production, a crop that takes almost 3 years to get your first harvest.

In 2019, our attitude changed. Abakundakawa cooperative in collaboration with its part­ners, mainly Agriterra, organised mobilization events in our village aiming at attracting youths to join coffee sector not only in production but also in the entire value chain. These events were conducted in form of football tournament and we enjoyed. The local government, cooperative and Agriterra have clearly explained the role of young people in the sustainability of the coffee sector."

Jean Marie Ntakirutimana, Business Advisor at Agriterra, adds: "After realizing that the cooperative is much willing to involve youth in their future plan, I proposed to create a special brand for youth and the cooperative. They went on with the idea and in 2021 the first batch of green beans under the youth brand was sold! A total of 2.7 metric tons was bought by This Side Up, a Dutch coffee buyer. The youth will get a bonus for coffee that is being sold under their brand.

If you want to become part of the youth council, you need at least 100 coffee trees. The youth council currently has 400 members, growing coffee on 2 hectares of land in total. They sell the coffee cherries to the cooperative, like all other farmers. The cooperative has 2 brands: women coffee and youth coffee. All coffee is sold by coop. As long as the coop exports coffee under the name of youth, they get bonuses in return. Now the youth council has also started a compost business on the side. These earning go to directly to the youth group.

Farm management, Uganda

Kibinge’s Coffee Farmers’ Co-operatives board and youth council (since 2017) saw a low productivity of farmland if famers became over 45 years old. The decrease of the coffee supply gave them a weak market position. Besides that, they wanted to contribute something to the youth unemployment. Kibinge decided they wanted to create productive land and farms with the help of youth. So, they set up a so-called coop-led farm management, to optimized productivity by the help of youth. Thanks to this youth increases their technical knowledge, gets a job and helps to strengthen the position of the coop. Within one year, 20 farms had youth working via farm management, the income of all members increased due to the higher amount of produced coffee and a higher quality of coffee. Two years later 43 farms (80 hectares) are supported, 2920 working days (36,5 working days per year per hectare) are created for the youth. That is the equivalent of over 13 full time employees.

Compost making, Rwanda

Youth face various constraints in joining a cooperative. Some cooperative by-laws stipulate membership conditions such as landownership and the payment of membership fees, to which youth often cannot adhere. Youth typically do not own (enough) land and cannot pay membership fees.

After a Youth Kick-Off Workshop in 2018, Ngiryi cooperative, member of UCORIBU in Rwanda, helped their young members to address this issue by supporting them to create a side business.

“We came to realize that our cooperative does not have a future if we do not involve the youth. Youth offer a potentially dynamic labour force which is needed in the agricultural sector as a whole and more specifically in rice production. Even if there are opportunities in the rice sector, it is still hard to mobilize youth into the sector as they are looking for quick wins” (Emmanuel, chairman of Ngiryi cooperative).

Emmanuel continues: "After the Youth Kick-Off Workshop, we talked to one of our partners (JICA) and they agreed to provide training to our youth to make compost using rice hulls. A group of 30 youth was trained and started making compost on their own. Each piece compost (2.4m length; 1.2m width and 1.2-1.5m height) made is sold at 40,000 Rwandan Franc (equal to 40 Dollars) and is sold to members of the cooperative and other farmers in their vicinity. The profit is shared among the youth. All those youth have finally paid their value share and some of them started renting fields to grow rice. The compost does not only provide them money but also helps our cooperative and farmers in general to increase the production as it is rich in carbon and increases the water and nutrient holding capacity of soil".

Milk transport by boda-boda , Uganda

Abesigane Dairy Cooperative faced the fact that their milk trucks can’t get to small farmers and so often the milk wasn’t cooled quick enough, this also has big influence of the volume of usable milk. The youth wanted to help the members to transport the milk to the fabric within 24 hours, by helping with the milk transportation from small farmers. The cooperative bought a motorcycle to support the idea of the youth to venture in transportation of milk. The youth now needs to improve their business plan; how to start small and then scale up their activity, how to share profit and what to do when a driver is ill, who is responsible for what and when is the break-even point for the investments and wins of the coop. Besides that, the cooperative was recommended to install a coach or mentor for the youth to support them.

From manure to money, Indonesia

One year after participating in the Kick-Off Workshop for youth participation, dairy cooperative KAN Jabung officially formed a youth council named KAN Muda in September 2020. Young farmers united through this group to jointly find solutions to existing problems. One of the issues the cooperative faced was the waste of manure on cooperative member’s dairy farms. There are 8700 cows in Jabung Area of which the average the solid waste of 20 Kg per cow per day is flushed directly into the river. Because of this, the local government has urged the cooperative to manage their waste better. Besides, other inhabitants who are non-dairy farmers and living in Jabung Area have opposed farming activities within this region because during wet season the combination of manure and rain water are blocking most of village sewer lines and causing manure-flood in the lower region of KAN Jabung.

The plan of the young farmers in cooperation with the cooperative is to manage manure by setting up manure collection points in every village, turning the waste into organic/compost fertilizer. The cooperative decided to rent a piece of land of 10 Ha for field testing of their compost fertilizer. Agriterra Indonesia invited an Agripool expert of Rabobank in the early stage of this project to explore the opportunities for manure management and turning it into a business unit of the cooperative; shifting waste into valuable resource, which also generates additional income for farmer members.

All in all, the manure project at Kan Jabung seems to be taking off and could possibly be developing towards a viable business unit within the cooperative and be used a successful example of cooperative youth inclusion in Asia.

PROJECT: JOBS, JOBS, JOBS

A bigger project was Jobs, Jobs, Jobs in which we supported farmer organisations by making it possible to hire coach and train new recruits. A co-financing structure with cooperatives is put in place for a limited time frame, to support cooperatives with the hiring expenses.

We have seen that having the young professionals on board in these cooperatives resulted in higher revenues, lower staff turnover, a clear division of responsibility between board and management and it has created great impact in client’s business such as increase and sustainability of product volumes and quality.

As for the young professionals, the programme allowed them to gain more working experience and provided them with an opportunity to enter the job market and being coached. Moreover, it has proven to be a good way to introduce youth into cooperative businesses. Apart from contributing directly to rural employment which is a major challenge for most developing economies, the interest of youth in cooperatives and agriculture in general is achieved. It helped young graduates to get a job, work in their profession and support their community.

A total number of 349 youngsters have been contracted at primary cooperatives. These small coops have business potential, generally need a manager, an accountant sometimes an agronomist, but often they do not have paid staff yet. In those two years the trainees have shown their added value, with the main aim to make business out of the cooperative.

The programme has helped me to build my career in agriculture and seeing it as a business. Through trainings, I have improved my skills and knowledge."

JohnTibeingana(Uganda)

"This job is my first Job. The project helped me, not only in creating a job opportunity and economic benefits but also in gathering personal and professional development lessons from practical on-the-job challenges.

DereseTsadike(Ethiopia)

" The Jobs, jobs, jobs programme contributed greatly to my career improvement. It has enabled me to transform my theoretical skills into practice as agronomist."

AngeUmutoniwase(Rwanda)

"Jobs, Jobs, Jobs helped me to show my capabilities and offered me an opportunity to learn responsibility and gain valuable skills as an agronomist for future success in the workplace. Not to mention making connections with people who may be helpful to my career goals."

(Rwanda)

Some learnings so far

Since the ‘Youth in Agriculture’ programme of Agriterra kicked off, several workshops, activities and interventions have taken place.

Here below some learnings we collected:

· Make clear to the youth, the mentor and the coop that the Kick-Off Workshop is just the beginning of a longer trajectory in which they should invest time, (some) money and energy to create results.

· There must be a clear link between the activities the youth organises and the cooperative to make the projects successful for all parties.

· The Youth Leadership Masterclass is a breeding ground for youth leadership, the participants feel empowered to make a difference within their coop.

· Note that setting-up a Youth Councils is NOT a (first) goal, youth should start with organising projects and activities, and talk to other youth members. First focus on the content, with some concrete results, the structure will follow later.

· A mentor can make a difference; he or she guides the youth within the organisation, helps them to set-up their projects, broadens their network and helps to think in possibilities.

· Exchange visits organised by the youth and cooperative together can play an important role in inspiring youth to see farming as a business.

· Crucial is a regular contact from the board with the youth and vice versa.

· Peer-2-peer learning and touching rather than teaching, are important. People learn by sharing experiences, think together about challenges, share examples, have fieldtrips and reflect on the speeches of key-note speakers.

“If want to know why you should set up a youth council, then you have to be clear about what you can and want to get out of it. Because it will cost you something; you have to invest time in it. As a manager, you need work on your continuity by getting young people interested in your cooperative. You will also tap into a rich source of ideas, because young people will come up with different ideas. Keep feeding the new generation. The new generation is super important.”

JoanvanOorschot Mentor youth council of Dutch dairy cooperative Royal Campina.