Rural Youth Perceptions About Agricultural Farming in the Punjab Pakistan: Implications for Agricultural Extension

Abstract

Agriculture is necessary to combat food security but due to climate change, present agriculture is looking helpless to ensure food supply for fast growing population especially in developing countries. Hence, it is imperative to explore innovative technological means to ensure food security and that is only possible if youth actively participate in agriculture activities because the young population is the most energetic and vibrant portion of a community. The youth population is increasing in developing countries and in the recent years, this rise in youth population has witnessed the highest rise of the history. Moreover, at the current trend, the projected rise in youth population is expected to reach a high in 2030 but interest of youth in agriculture is declining and that is a negative sign. Now, in this alarming situation a question comes to mind, that is “Who is the future farmer?” Agricultural countries cannot afford to have residents with practically no information about agriculture who may become the leaders for agricultural planning and policymaking in the future. The objective of the present study was to 1) visualize the perception of young people towards agriculture and 2) factors deviating youth from participation in agriculture and 3) probing opportunities to build trust among youth. The population of this study was comprised of all the youth living in rural areas of district Faisalabad within the age bracket of 15 to 29years. All tehsils of district Faisalabad were selected and from each tehsil, two rural union councils were randomly chosen. Then from each of the selected union councils, three villages were randomly selected. From each of the selected villages, twelve youth respondents were purposively selected who were directly or indirectly involved in agriculture and livestock, thus making a sample size of 432 respondents. An interview schedule was used as the research instrument for data collection. According to findings regarding perception of youth towards agriculture, a large number were not interested in agriculture related activities because of the high risk and low profit. A large number (58.1%) of the respondents had very low interest towards agriculture and results regarding interest of youth in agriculture related activities showed that youth were not much interested in agriculture. Respondents perceived that agriculture is not a respectable and profitable business. Results regarding frequency of visits to livestock farm (3.83, 1.360) was ranked at 1st position in the category of "sometimes to very often” followed by visits to crop field (3.81, 1.370), market (3.57, 1.315), veterinary hospital (3.39, 1.245) and model dairy farm (3.38, 1.303) ranked at 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th positions respectively. Results regarding the perception of youth for different field practices showed that youth perceived that they visit farm “weekly to daily” (4.80, 0.969) to check growth and health of crop hence ranked at 1st position followed by selection of high yielding and disease resistant variety (4.75, 0.964), in time sowing (4.74, 0.964), preparation of field (4.74, 0.961), intercultural operation to maintain expected growth (4.20, 0.955), weed eradication (4.17, 0.953), proper storage and transport to market (4.10, 0.953), calculation of the comparative pricing of different crops (4.10, 0.953), pesticide application in time (4.08, 0.952), proper irrigation (4.08, 0.952), selection of crop according to climate of your area (4.06, 0.952), water test (4.05, 0.952), preventive measures taken to minimize the effect any disease from previous cultivation (4.05, 0.951), layout for efficient irrigation (3.80, 0.950), veterinary hospital (3.60, 0.950), land fertility test (3.50, 0.949), maintain proper depth of seed (3.49, 0.948), use of proper time and methods of harvesting (3.40, 0.948), thinning to maintain plant to plant distance (3.16, 0.940), use of recommended seed rate (3.15, 0.911), drilling (2.99, 0.895), and balanced and recommended application of fertilizer (2.90, 0.686) ranked at 2nd…. 21th , and 22th respectively. Demographic characteristics showed positive association with sources of information. It was concluded that youth are losing interest in agriculture, however that may be regained by successful policies like better youth initiative and Kamyab nawjawan program.