Young people’s perspectives on farming in Ghana: a Q study

Sumberg, James; Yeboah, Thomas; Flynn, Justin; Anyidoho, Nana Akua

doi:10.1007/s12571-016-0646-y

Cited by 61 publications

(67 citation statements)

References 15 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The crop farming-based livelihoods depend on supportive processes such as culture of sustaining institutions in form of resource governance structures [34,36] such as the local CRBs and VAGs which would be useful for crop protection and elephant management. This study revealed that such processes were feeble and largely restricted to family ties and clans.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the absence of functional institutions and with undue human pressure to overcome livelihood hardships, human resilience to conserve elephants may also eventually collapse [34,35]. The functional institutions of sustainability would encompass various social governance elements inter alia functional governance structures, processes, policies, and norms relevant to elephant conservation [36,37].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Elephant Crop Damage: Subsistence Farmers’ Social Vulnerability, Livelihood Sustainability and Elephant Conservation

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

African elephants (Loxodonta africana) induce considerable crop damage risks, shocks and stresses on subsistence farmers at the wildlife-agriculture interface. In this study, we explored the social dimensions of human-elephant interactions in the wildlife-agrarian landscape. The study aimed at unraveling the associated hazardous conditions and nature of the subsistence farmers’ social vulnerability and practices with respect to elephant crop damage, subsistence farmers’ livelihoods, and elephant conservation. Applying qualitative thematic content analysis, the sustainable livelihood framework (SLF) and additive generalized linear models (GLMs), this study revealed that the status of relational social capital influences human-elephant conflict (HEC) management and subsistence farmers’ responses, regardless of the farmers’ social learning and environmental values about the social-ecological system. The strengthening of multiple local stakeholder participation, institutional governance and access to livelihoods assets are needed for human food security and elephant conservation. Adoption of more effective nuanced crop protection counter-measures against elephants at farm level is urgently needed.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elephant Crop Damage: Subsistence Farmers’ Social Vulnerability, Livelihood Sustainability and Elephant Conservation

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The two last topics were selected because they were regularly mentioned in other studies as topics that led young people to lose interest in farming (e.g. Asciutti et al, 2016;Sumberg et al, 2017;Tadele and Gella, 2012). The interviewees were invited to rank each topic as: (1) this is not an issue for me; (2) this is an issue for people in my village, but does not affect me personally; (3) this represents a slight disadvantage in my case; (4) this is a major constraint for me; and (5) this is an insurmountable obstacle and explains why I am not interested in farming.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young people’s willingness to farm under present and improved conditions in Thailand

Salvago

Phiboon²,

Faysse

et al. 2019

Outlook Agric

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Studies of young people's willingness to farm usually analyse their plans based on the resources available to them, or their hopes if they had access to more resources, but rarely study the two jointly. However, in newly industrialized countries in Asia, such joint assessments are needed to disentangle the extent to which young people's limited involvement in farming is due to lack of interest or to the fact that they see no way to get round the obstacles to starting the kind of farming they want to practice. This study analysed the vision of 86 young rural people in Prachinburi Province, Thailand, concerning farming, their plan to farm under prevailing conditions and their willingness to become a farmer if more opportunities to start farming were available. More than two-thirds of the interviewees were not farming at the time of the interview, but half planned to start farming, either part or full time, in the coming decade. One-third of the interviewees said that if they had better opportunities to start farming, they would reconsider their current plans to work in non-agricultural sectors and instead become full-time farmers. Public policies aimed at increasing the number of young people who become farmers should consequently not take the prevailing lack of engagement in farming by many young rural people as a given. Such policies should not only support young people who already plan to farm, but also those who would be willing to farm if they had better opportunities to do so.

show abstract

“…In the international development community, there is a strong narrative that "the rural youth" in developing countries find farming unattractive and therefore opt out of farming when possible (Leavy & Hossain, 2014;Sumberg et al, 2017). 1 This perception has sparked much concern recently with growing evidence of a youth bulge in numerous developing countries, many of whom are located in Africa (Ahmed, 2016;Evoh, 2012;Sommers, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Of Bulls and Bulbs: Aspirations and Perceptions of Rural Youth in Zambia

Daum

2018

SSRN Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

During the last years, policymakers and development-practitioners focused heavily on making farming more attractive for the rural youth in Africa. To reach this goal, different actions are proposed, often emphasizing the need for modern farming and information and communication technologies. These proposed actions are mostly based on anecdotes and prior policy beliefs, but not on empirical evidence since scientists have largely neglected this topic. This paper aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the aspirations and perceptions of young people and therefore to the formulation of policy actions that fit these aspirations. Two research methods were used to explore the aspirations and perceptions of rural youth: interviews and drawing exercises, a novel method in this context that allows for both a qualification and quantification of aspirations. The results show that rural youth have very diverse opinions and aspirations. In contrast to the literature, young people were found to reflect carefully about the positive and negative sides of farming, rural and urban life, and of foreign countries. Imagining their future farm, young people mostly envisioned using draught animals and having electricity (which explaining the reference to bulls and bulbs in the title of this paper). In addition, the young people aspired to greater farm diversity and applying more fertilizer. Few respondents mentioned the use of modern technologies such as tractors, and none mentioned ICTs. While it is difficult to generalize our results, the findings suggest that policymakers and developmentpractitioners need to pay more attention to the actual aspirations of the rural youth to avoid wellintended but misguided policies.

show abstract

Young people’s perspectives on farming in Ghana: a Q study

Cited by 61 publications

References 15 publications

Elephant Crop Damage: Subsistence Farmers’ Social Vulnerability, Livelihood Sustainability and Elephant Conservation

Elephant Crop Damage: Subsistence Farmers’ Social Vulnerability, Livelihood Sustainability and Elephant Conservation

Young people’s willingness to farm under present and improved conditions in Thailand

Of Bulls and Bulbs: Aspirations and Perceptions of Rural Youth in Zambia

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About