Attracting and Retaining Youth in Agriculture: Challenges and Prospects

Agriculture is still the primary occupation of more than half of Indian population asserting importance of this sector in various socio-economic aspects of the country. Youth involvement is strongly realized for agricultural reform so that it can keep pace with changing global economy. India being the youngest nation in the world has massive youth resource to offer to agriculture sector but unfortunately, youth participation in agriculture is declining. With this background, this paper aims to discuss some pertinent issues in present context like importance of youth involvement and reasons for growing disinterest of youth in farming sector, channelizing enormous youth workforce of the country into agriculture, strategies for attracting and retaining youth in agro-based rural enterprises and institutional efforts to leverage youth for agriculture. With the help of several evidences available from different sources we aim to find out answers to some inescapable questions like whether youth participation in agriculture can decipher the crisis of unemployment and migration, whether agriculture sector has enough prospects to offer decent livelihoods to youth, how youth can be motivated to take up farming and farm related businesses and most importantly, whether leveraging youth for agriculture can be an instrument for modernization and future growth of Indian agriculture.