I grew up in a small scale farmers family in 1970s, just like over 3/4th of the youth who live in rural areas of developing countries, mostly sustaining on agriculture.
My parents would do all farming activities, hardly discussing with me any issues concerning agriculture. They would neither ask me to join in their day to day work nor teach me about crops being grown, harvested and sold. Growing up there was no role for me in my household as far as farming was concerned. I was thus, totally detached from the farming activities and was just concentrating on my studies. Maybe my parents realized farming is not lucrative enough and I must focus on my studies to do something better than farming. Or maybe it is because I used to see my parents toiling hard and clearly it was a back breaking vocation for small-scale farmers like my parents then and still it is almost the same hard work now. I had no way to reduce their drudgery. I did not have any ideas on how to help them and maybe even no motivation to contribute to farming. Unfortunately, the scenario has not changed much, when I see young people in my village.
