Jénine Shepherd | Youth farming a resilient future in vulnerable communities

Today’s young people will become leaders of a world still challenged by hunger and poverty. Experts say the world will not achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 – zero hunger – by 2030, which will affect 660 million in the next eight years, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s 2021 annual report. In the year COVID-19 struck, hunger rose to an estimated 768 million people globally. Sixty million were from Latin America and the Caribbean, despite the region only accounting for 8.38 per cent of the world’s population.

The latest Human Development Report (HDR) of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) perfectly analyses the crisis confounding our globe: “Layers of uncertainty are stacking up and interacting to unsettle life in unprecedented ways, with devastating impact for billions of people around the world.” The HDR further states that with back-to-back crises like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine, combined with social and economic shifts, dangerous planetary changes, and more, the Human Development Index declined globally for two years in a row.

Declining food security, compounded by climate change, is high on the radar globally and regionally, and must also become a priority for current youth leadership in Jamaica. CARICOM recently announced the ‘25 in 5’ agenda to reduce the region’s food import bill by 25 per cent in the next five years. This is welcome, considering that the food import bill for Jamaica, with 2.9 million residents, was US$900 million pre-pandemic, and US$700 million for Barbados, despite a population size that is one-tenth the size of Jamaica’s. If we are to thrive as small island developing nations, greater priority must be given to the agricultural sector as a sustainable means of development, to lessen our dependence on highly volatile industries such as tourism, which accounted for 24.5 per cent of the Caribbean’s GDP in 2020 (Economic Impact Reports, WTTC, 2021). Tourism should not be the crutch on which Caribbean societies lean. We must diversify, focusing more on agricultural development to address food security, while boosting economic growth and Jamaica’s competitive advantage as a logistics hub.

EDUCATION INEQUALITIES

The youth are willing to play a part in bolstering agricultural development to build a food-resilient future. Having worked with over 12,000 children and their families through Youths For Excellence, which is mandated to focus on education inequities, our NGO recommends a model that integrates Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4, quality education, at its core. We recognise the intersectionality between SDG 4 and other SDGs, like decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), no poverty (SDG 1), zero hunger (SDG 2), climate action (SDG 13), peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG 16), and sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11).

Urban agricultural education can be a powerful tool for learning productivity-boosting techniques, like aquaponics, that improve the economic outcomes of communities; boosting climate resiliency by greatly reducing emissions; and reducing crime and violence, while providing legitimate streams of income and productive use of time. We must also champion regional adoption of early-childhood agricultural education and, eventually, worldwide adoption, to set a firm foundation for next-generation action.

We are working on launching the Farm the Future (FTF) initiative in partnership with the Rural Agricultural Development Authority, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Rose Town Foundation and the members of parliament for two pilot communities, Minister Delroy Chuck for Grants Pen and Mark Golding for Rose Town. We recommend a mixture of technical capacity-building training bolstered by job placements and agribusiness development. We will tackle the recurring challenge of limited job placement opportunities in the post-training period by providing start-up venture capital and job placements on FTF farms.

Urban, climate-smart farming populated by persons with limited opportunities is mushrooming as a resilience-building intervention. The European Union’s education for entrepreneurship in agriculture programme, called AGRIENT, like the Farm The Future initiative, is working to train people in agricultural techniques and help them establish agribusinesses via virtual reality technologies. This is very similar to initiatives already undertaken in Iran and Uganda which have very similar economic landscapes. We can and should go further by championing a cultural shift to a high-tech, agricultural society.

Agricultural development is a key component in mitigating the impact of the pandemic, while building more resilient communities. Urban farming is not just about food security; it provides jobs, education, entrepreneurship, socio-economic advancement for underserved communities, and business deals with large industry players. Our recommendations have been well received by the ministries of agriculture in the seven other Caribbean countries that Youths For Excellence (YFE) serves, so we plan to expand the FTF programme to these countries once the pilots have been successfully concluded in Jamaica. Our programme makes a solid contribution to the competitiveness of the agriculture sector in both domestic and international markets.

LIMITED SUPPORT

There is currently limited support for young people who are trying to start social enterprises. Funding is simply non-existent. A centralised grant system in Jamaica and the Caribbean, similar to what exists in the United States, would be helpful, so that young people who have great ideas for social entrepreneurship can be supported in the best way possible. Young people find it hard to come up with the money for registration and maintenance of company status. The fees are crippling to the people who are genuinely doing the volunteer work. That means we need to assess, as a country, how these bureaucratic processes are hindering us as against helping us to uplift the vulnerable.

Partner governments should support youth organisations like YFE financially and institutionally to ensure the successful adoption of these programmes, and that we are financially viable. I also join my colleague delegates from UNDP’s ‘Ready Set Great’ youth in development showcase in 2021, in calling for business-creation hubs for young entrepreneurs and incentives for business start-ups that include information on the ‘how-to for business creation’.

With public-private sector support, we can improve the lives of millions and build a more resilient, food-secure future led by resilient people no longer left behind.

Jénine Shepherd is founder of Youths For Excellence Ltd. You can contact her on @shepherdjenine on Instagram and Facebook or @jenineashepherd on Twitter, and by emailing jshepherd@youthsforexcellence.org. This article is part of a series written by youth partners of UNDP’s annual ‘Ready Set Great’ youth in development showcase. Visit www.readysetgreatja.com for more information.