“#Youth should be more vocal about #AsianIrrigation Issues to give stakeholders a stronger sense of urgency. They need to know we are involved.” –Asian Youth Initiative More than 100 stakeholders including policy-makers, Non-Government Organizations (NGO), research institutions, young professionals, young farmers and youth representatives from different parts of the Asia converged from January 20-22, 2016 at the Asian Development Bank (ADB)... Continue reading

There is a current wave of issues concerning how to engage the youth in Agriculture and this is a major agricultural development agenda. It is evident that Ghana’s agriculture has an image problem which makes it unattractive to the youth and if am allowed to say,“it isn’t cool’’. The images of farmers most youth have are of an old person wearing... Continue reading

The theme of the event was picked from an event held by FANRPAN a few years back. The idea was to help the Agriculture faculty students see the new directions of agriculture from just farming to agribusiness while placing more emphasis on the comfortable and enjoyable life that youth in agriculture can live and enjoy if they do things right. YPARD... Continue reading

Patch agriculture is an ancient activity in Africa that has been practiced for centuries in backyards and open spaces. It entails the use of small plots of land for growing vegetables or rearing animals and its an activity which is practiced in rural and urban areas.    In urban areas it can be found in public lands, undeveloped private lands and... Continue reading

Mrs. Chandra Kala Shrestha, a 31 year old woman has been practicing modern agriculture since 2011 in her small sized farm in Madhyapur Thimi, Nepal. She grows mostly offseason vegetables like tomatoes and pumpkins on her 0.3 ha of land and is continuously supported by her husband, Mr. Anil Kumar Shrestha as far as agricultural operations are concerned. Like many other... Continue reading

It’s hard to explain the feeling that I experience when I sit down to a meal where the vegetables being served once started as a pack of seeds in my hand. It’s even more fulfilling and stirs a great sense of pride in me when I see my fresh produce feeding my neighborhood. When I decided to first start greenhouse farming... Continue reading

  A lot has happened in the past six months of the YPARD mentoring program. And it was time to have a face to face session with my mentor and evaluate progress. Meeting a mentor and a friend was so exciting; it was a different session since previous sessions was done over the phone, being the only way to overcome the... Continue reading

It is definitely important and beneficial when activities in the research sphere fit in and meet the needs and priorities of its target group. When looked at holistically, it is important that research institutions, whether international, regional or national, ensure their research and results meet the need of the countries where they find themselves. This was the core of discussions and... Continue reading

We are delighted to welcome our very first YPARD Country representative for Madagascar: Malala Onisoa Rakotojaofeno Malala, a Malagasy environmentalist and economist by training has over five years on evironmental related issues. Her areas of expertise include Environment, development, economics and agriculture. Currently, she is a PhD student at the University of Antananarivo and have been involved in agricultural activities since... Continue reading

In 2016 YPARD is celebrating ten years since its official launch at the GFAR Triennial meeting in New Delhi, November 2006.  It was born from the challenges facing young professionals in agricultural development and the need for a support structure. This year is the occasion to celebrate YPARD’s 10 year achievements and reaffirm our focus on supporting youth in today’s fast-paced,... Continue reading

Statistics released by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the year 2015 reveal that 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy life with a majority of the world’s hungry people living in developing countries  and 12.9 percent of the population being undernourished. Similarly, hidden hunger which is also referred to as micronutrient... Continue reading

“A lot of times, data are released (or made open) when they are no longer really useful”. That was the view of Summer Allen, a research coordinator in the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI); and one of the panellists at the Open data for agricultural innovations sessions organised recently by the Global Open... Continue reading

We are delighted to welcome our very first YPARD Country representative for Lebanon: Malak Tleis Malak hails from  a rural area in Lebanon. Her passion for agriculture started way before she can remember and its the same passion that drove her to go towards agriculture studies. She holds an Agricultural Engineering degree from Lebanese University with a specialization in Plant Production... Continue reading

For the last couple of weeks, over 400 young people from over 35 countries completed the MyFood30 survey and shared their views on the future of our agri-food systems. MyFood30 was designed to find out what support young people need to make a contribution to the agri-food system related Sustainable Development Goals (SDG2, 12 and 15).From 10 August until 29 September MyFood30 partner organizations... Continue reading

“Peter Casier is now delivering the introduction to social media #GCARD3,” This was the first tweet about GCARD3 Social Media Training, tweeted by Ratih (@ratatatih) on 7th, December 2015, in Bangkok, Thailand. This training organized by GFAR, covered an overview of all social media tools, their use for nonprofit causes and how to put all these into one strategy in a... Continue reading

This blogpost by Nikita Bhusal, one of the GCARD3 social reporter,originally appeared on the GFAR website. Reflecting on discussions at the recent High level Policy Dialogue in Bangkok, Nikita Bhusal, a student of Food Technology from Nepal, believes the transition from traditional and subsistence agriculture in the Asia Pacific region depends on how we attend to a number of “flashpoints” for agricultural... Continue reading

According to the World Bank, the food and agriculture sector accounts for 10 percent of the global gross domestic product, which makes the sector worth almost $5 trillion. If we look at the food as output of farms, it is either sold immediately as raw food, agricultural commodity, or it is being processed and then sold as an intermediate or final... Continue reading

If a system has been created out of necessity, with unimaginable governmental influence, what happens when necessity is gone and the influence that has sustained the system dissipates? The International Agroecology Conference in Cuba this year drew up many issues and exposed these questions. Cuba is on the front line of major change, how they handle this change will have far... Continue reading

Currently, there are 7.3 billion people in the world (United Nations, 2015) who depend on agriculture for their basic needs- food, clothing and shelter. 7.3 billion people! What a huge opportunity! Everyone needs to eat! And farmers remain indispensable and vitally important to meet those needs. Despite all that, today’s young people, who will determine how bright the future will be,... Continue reading

Corey Watts Originally published by Corey Watts on the Landscapes.org Website What do a Ugandan lawyer, a Mexican engineer, a Nepalese agriculture student, a Canadian policy advisor, and an Italian forest scientist have in common? They are all young, they are all innovators in their field, and they are all passionate about people and their environments.They are also all part of... Continue reading