The Ghana Census of Agriculture (GCA), 2017/2018 has recommended the promotion of agriculture as a viable business among the youth.

It said they should be attracted, especially those with tertiary level education, among whom unemployment was high. The report released recently showed a low participation in agriculture among the youth and stated that it was important to bring them on board in order to promote diversity and complementarity.

“The full potentials of agriculture in employment, food security, foreign exchange earnings, wealth and investment outcomes are not being realised considering the current modes of operation and characteristics of the persons and institutions engaged in agriculture,” it said.

“Therefore, there is the need to address some issues, such as adoption of new technologies, low productivity in agriculture and lack of resources, among others, that have plagued the agriculture sector to attract more people and investments into agriculture,” it added.

The United Nations (UN) defines youth as persons aged 15 to 24 years and the National Youth Policy of Ghana defines it as person aged 15 to 35 years. Per the UN definition, the number of youths in agricultural households is 2,270,441 representing 20.0 per cent of the total agricultural household population of 11,340,947. Out of the total youth in agricultural households, 51.3 per cent are males and 48.7 per cent are females.

Relating to Ghana’s definition of youth (15-35 years), the youth population in agricultural households is 4,077,618, representing 36.0 percent of the total agricultural household population. The youth in urban agricultural households form 37.7 percent of the total population of agricultural households while the proportion for rural agricultural households is 35.4 percent.

Female youth constitutes about 51.0 percent of the total youth population and there are more female youth than male youth in both urban (51.5 percent and 48.5 percent respectively) and rural (50.6 percent and 49.4 percent respectively) agricultural households.

The population of the youth (15-35 years) engaged in agriculture is 902,174. There are more youth in rural areas (31.3 percent) engaged in agriculture than those in urban (24.3 percent) areas.

About two-thirds (66.7 percent) of the youth are males with the proportion of females in the rural areas (34.2 percent) higher than their counterparts in the urban areas (29.7 percent). Three in 10 persons engaged in agriculture are youth with similar proportion of males (30.1 percent) and females (28.9 percent).

The census suggested the youth to be sensitised to appreciate the viability of agriculture as a source of employment and livelihoods and to encourage the youth with higher levels of education other than basic education to go into agriculture for their livelihoods.

“Support the youth to participate in modern agriculture practices, and agricultural enterprises along the value chain, including off-farm activities such as handling, processing, packaging and transportation”.

“Adopt special programmes to build the capacity of the youth in agricultural operations and facilitate the acquisition and documentation of land for agricultural purposes,” it stated.