What is also clearly evident in the policy discourse is the role given to rural youth in bringing about the desired change and transformation of the agricultural sector. The rural and agricultural development policy argues that not much can be achieved by trying to teach the older generation of farmers who are illiterate and unable and/or unwilling to acquire and adopt new, improved and scientific methods of farming. For this reason, it stresses, there is a need to cultivate a new generation of literate farmers who have preferably some post elementary school agricultural training or, at the very least, completed elementary school. This is made even more necessary, it claims, since more and more rural children and youth are attending school. If such youth have neither the willingness nor the means to become farmers and continue to migrate to urban centers, the urban economy simply has no capacity to absorb them and will collapse. As such, the policy argues that at least up to 70% of the rural youth and children currently attending school have to be contained where they are and be prepared to pursue a life in agriculture.
As part of its lengthy analysis of the nature of the agricultural sector, its role in leading the overall [economic] development of the country, and the specific technological, ecological and other adaptations that need to be taken to achieve the desired transformation of the sector; the government tries to addresses the huge gap it perceives between the expected role of the rural youth in this process vis-a-vis their current attitude towards and interest in agriculture. The government considers this to represent a formidable challenge for the overall success of the policy and repeatedly stresses the need to challenge and change the attitudes of young people towards farming, especially when it comes to those with some level of formal schooling.
In this regard, the major problem lies with the relatively more educated and younger generation. It is certainly true that there are [probably] thousands of young people who are educated and yet are engaged in agriculture either for lacking any other opportunities for work or other reasons; and these young people show a level of determination and commitment to their work no less than that of the traditional uneducated farmer. And, despite receiving no particular training in agriculture, they nevertheless have proven themselves to be more productive than the traditional farmer by simply putting to use the knowledge and skills they have received from their general education and by being highly receptive to new and improved methods. The attitude and mind set of the majority of young people who are currently in schools is, however, far different from that of these few. The urban and rural youth currently in school show no interest in going in to either agriculture training or farming. The vast majority of this group of youth perceive agriculture as an embodiment of poverty and backwardness. […] For this group of youth, the apparent poverty and misery with in which the vast majority of agrarian population is forced to live and which this group of youth is witness to is simply proof enough that any occupation in that field will lead to a similar fate (MOI, 2002b, p. 42)13.
The policy goes even further to stipulate that the potential threat posed by this is so serious that it can result in a situation where work in the agricultural sector becomes only a last resort for the new generation of the rural youth (p.43). It stresses the need to tackle this attitude stating that no rural development policy can yield any results as long as this mind set is left to prevail. And considering the intense dislike the rural youth (and especially the more
13 I have chosen to use my own translation of the Amharic text as it appears in the original publication of the
policy document here since I felt the English version did not adequately reflect the original Amharic text.
40
educated) it believes show to such a career, the policy aims to secure their immediate engagement in and long term commitment to a life of farming through a combination of two main strategies. First is challenging and changing the existing work ethic which tends to despise laborious work such as farming. Here it emphasizes the vital role of schools in inculcating the inherent value in any work including farming in the minds of students especially during primary education. But, this cannot, the policy argues, be very effective in changing the mind set and further requires making sure that the new generation of educated and trained farmers will be able to earn a level of income that is at least comparable to that of those with a similar level of education but engaged in other sectors [p. 44]. It therefore stresses the need to ensure that educated youth who go in to agriculture (either out of interest or for a lack of any other livelihood options) get the knowledge, skills, equipment, as well as the technical, material, and financial support they need to achieve a level of productivity that would generate, at the very least, a comparable level of income to other occupations and livelihood options open to people of a similar level of education. In short, the government aims to ensure that youth who go in to agriculture earn as much (if not more) as their counterparts who opt to pursue non-agricultural careers.
There are also similar discourses in other policy documents. The capacity building policy of the government also notes the emerging trend of the rural young to view agricultural work as undesirable and degrading (MOI, 2002a, p.40). It stresses the need for the education and training policy of the country to take into account the fact that agriculture will continue to be the major avenue of employment for most rural youth and stresses the need to devise an appropriate level of training that will prepare them for such an occupation not only in terms of the required knowledge and skills but also in terms of their willingness and commitment to pursue such an occupation (p117-118, 128 -129).
While underlining that the maximum utilization of labor, improving productivity through new, technological and innovative methods, the technological transformation of the traditional farming that has persisted thus far, and cultivating a new generation of educated, skilled and innovative farmers are the major goals of the rural development policy, the capacity building strategy argues that all of these are invariably tied with the youth. The rural youth are the major source of the required labor, they are likely to be relatively more educated, and hence more receptive to new ideas, methods and approaches. As such, it
argues, their participation in and commitment to the transformation that is being sought is more important than that of any other section of the rural society (MOI, 2002a, p. 254).
The rural youth, and especially those with elementary or post-elementary schooling, are considered key actors in both of these spolicies and the government has no doubts that its ADLI strategy would utterly fail if the rural youth simply decide to try out their luck somewhere else rather than pursuing a future life in agriculture. Not only are the rural young seen as being more receptive to new knowledge, ideas, technologies and methods; but also as instruments for showcasing such innovations. The rural agricultural TVET program for example consists of training development agents (DAs) who will in turn be used to train farmers at their respective local ḳebeles and show case the benefits of adopting new technologies and methods through actual implementation and demonstration of results.