The Road to 2030, with the youth in agriculture

The theme of the 2016 International Youth Day , 12th of  August, is “The Road to 2030: Eradicating Poverty and Achieving Sustainable Consumption and Production”. Through this theme, the United Nations recognize “the leading role of young people in ensuring poverty eradication and achieving sustainable development through sustainable consumption and production”. They use as objective and framework the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Agriculture plays a key role in the way we produce and consume. Its practice has a huge influence (positive or negative) on the well-being of people and nature on a long term. Therefore, Young Professionals involved in agriculture, from farming to policy making, have a massive power in shaping a sustainable world, that’s to say one that will self-sustain itself on a long term (including all its aspects: health, society, economy, environment etc).

The Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD) believe in the necessity of, first and foremost, listening to and understanding Youth’ visions for their lives. Furthermore, we are convinced that a sustainable world can only happen when people get together, discuss, debate and envision a common future. At this occasion, YPARD’s Foresight Ambassador, Oluwabunmi Ajilore, looks at the importance of Foresight approaches towards enabling young people to define the futures they want, which in turn helps them assess the decisions and actions they have to make NOW, towards these. Read: Eradicating youth poverty through agricultural production? The role of foresight

Also, we want to show what young people in agriculture are up to, Today, to fulfill this noble cause, at their own level. From India to Barbados, Young Champions for Sustainable Development aren’t missing. The two featured young women are young agripreneurs mentored for a period of one year, in the context of the YAP - youth agripreneurs project - initiated by the Global Forum - GFAR in partnership with YPARD. Nikki and Kellyan tell us where they are at, with their initiative, since the launching of the project, last April. Meet Nikki, a young Indian dairy farmer focusing on Indigenous milk breeds and Kellyann an agri-business young woman from Barbados who works with several local farmers to get the best organic products for skincare.

Check also IFAD’s blogpost featuring seven rural youth from around the world to discuss the challenges and opportunities they face, and to discover what they need in order to improve their lives and feed the world (check the e-cards here).

Finally join the discussions via #Youth2030 #YouthDay #RuralYouth on Facebook and Twitter, all through the day, and do not miss the Tweetchat on young people, agriculture and sustainable development, by rural reporters with our representative for Nigeria, Olawale Ojo.

More is to come with the reporting of the on-the-ground activities by YPARD Chapters all around the world in the coming weeks.

Picture credit: YPARD - Marina Cherbonnier