Why we must support youth as agents of change for sustainable food transitions
Overcoming barriers that prevent young people from participating.
What will it take for the world to see young people as not just stakeholders, but as immediate and capable leaders for change?
Young people are central to food systems transformations, providing the next generations that will produce the world’s food as well as the consumers who will shape global diets. These younger generations are the demographic most affected by the sustainability decisions made today, yet they are usually excluded from sustainability planning, their voices and actions absent in policy drafting.
In this post, we share some of the barriers that youth face to participate in and offer potential pathways to food systems planning and change.
Barriers to youth participation
Young people face many barriers and challenges that restrict their ability to shape food system transformations.
At the production level farmers are often reported as older, with the average ages of farmers estimated at about 50-60 in Europe, and around 40 in the Global South. As the 2021 CFS-HLPE found, however, food systems are the largest employer of young people.
Young people are still very much present within agricultural workforces and facing climate change challenges that are expected to worsen during their life times. These young actors often lack access to resources such as land, inputs, finance, credit, markets and knowledge that limit their capacity to act. Despite their key roles in shaping the future of agriculture, they are often excluded from decision-making roles, and struggle to find meaningful and remunerative jobs that support fulfilling lifestyles.
This same lack of youth representation is found across food decision-making spaces beyond farming, and especially at national discussions on food strategy. Of the 114 national pathways analysed by the United Nations Food Systems Coordination Hub, 77 reflect an awareness of youth issues; 41 perceive youth as a subject of development and only 36 see youth as an important stakeholder. Young people as stakeholders are rarely provided support to build coalitions or coordinate activities.
These representation barriers are compounded for young people from indigenous or tribal communities, where shifts to modern schooling have caused traditional knowledge to be disregarded, or stigmatised as ‘backward’. The result is that many feel alienated and are moving away from traditional practices, despite the cultural value they hold, as well as the sustainability and nutritional benefits they offer.
Ultimately, We need to address these challenges and build pathways to empower the engagement of young people for achieving just food systems transformations.
Pathways to empower youth engagement There are several potential pathways to empower youth and enhance their engagement in shaping food systems transformations.
The first is to approach youth from a standpoint based on principles of rights, equity, agency and recognition, to appreciate the importance of contributions of young people for food system change. For example, a push for more equitable food systems must include a redistribution of power and resource imbalances between generations.
Linked, we need to acknowledge young people as a heterogenous group, with intersecting needs and identities. For instance, young women’s barriers and priorities might be quite different to those faced by young men, and again different amongst indigenous groups.
We therefore need to consider the needs of youth across gender, socio-economic status and cultural backgrounds. This also points to the need to reverse the loss of indigenous knowledge by building respect and dignity for traditional cultures.
Another path is to ensure representation of young people is supported with resources to enable capacity building. This challenge was exemplified at the UNFSS, where young people were involved, but not supported with adequate resources to coordinate consensus on topics and sustainability agendas. Instead, they are working through WhatsApp to establish their position around topics, such as agro-ecology or climate-smart agriculture.
While young people need greater representation in decision-making forums, this needs to be combined with access to financial resources, skill-building and technology to drive change in global discourses.
Success stories
There are of course success stories.
A key finding from the 2021 HLPE report was the interest of young people in using digital tools and technologies to increase innovation and democracy. Examples of this can be found in NISD’s work in Uganda, where rural youth act as village agents using mobile technologies to share information on topics, such as insurance pay-outs or seed quality, to assist local resilience strategies. By championing these approaches, young people became agents, and gained the voice to advocate against the inequalities within their society.
Another example of how to foster growth and leadership can be found in the actions of the Global Youth Institute, which provides internship opportunities, networking activities and capacity building. The GYI works as a week-long academic conference to highlight youth efforts to address food insecurity. The programme also offers student and teacher delegates with access to events such as the Borlaug Dialogue, to connect young leaders with global experts.
##Conclusions
Much of the discourse around the importance of just, sustainable food systems is to create a better world for the young and future generations, despite the pressures of climate change and changing consumption. The dominant approach to this currently however appears to be a case of ‘for the youth, without the youth’.
Instead, we need to recognise young people as capable leaders, to work ‘for the youth, with the youth’ to empower young people to drive the change and create more equitable plans for future food systems.
This post was written by Matt Heaton and Nitya Rao.
Image credit: Zoe Schaeffer