Attracting Youth into Agriculture. Developing a strategic framework to encourage young people into agriculture

Youth are the cohort that will provide solutions for future challenges facing agriculture, but youth are generally unaware of the diverse career opportunities offered by the industry.

Dr Hlami Ngwenya of South Africa, coined the acronym PERFECT opportunities to highlight the full breadth of careers from creating agricultural policies to designing technologies for agricultural uses. Lower than required numbers of youth pursuing post-16 studies in agriculture is an international concern.

In response, in the United Kingdom, Professor Louise Archer and her team researched, analysed and then created the conceptual framework of Science Capital. This framework identified eight key dimensions relative to what science the youth cohort knows, how they think about science (their attitudes and dispositions), who they know (e.g. if their parents are very interested in science) and what sort of everyday engagement they have with science. This Nuffield report seeks to apply this framework to achieve the same result in attracting youth into agriculture.

Tasmania could be used as the pilot study state. It is economically dependent on the agricultural industry and currently has a strong foundation of suitable programs/activities into which international examples could be integrated or altered to suit. The ultimate aim being to increase the number of young people entering the agricultural industry to build capacity and resolve current and future issues.