Agriculture needs branding if we are to attract youth.

When it comes to agriculture, the first thing that comes to mind is a dirty farmer, you can see their shabby torn tatters,  bare footed and wearing an old hat of an America baseball team that he is not familiar with and wouldn’t care to know really.

 

Worse still is the desolate look, the look of submission, resignation and loss of hope. You can tell the smile and greetings are formalities but he would really rather breakdown in tears and cry his heart out; oh this miserable world!

 

We wonder why youth stay away from the field? Simple, it is not as glamorous as the Kardashians or hosts on E. News or their favorite singer and actor. We feed the youth these materialistic ideologies day in day out and expect them to choose the dirty farming for a career.

 

Where is the glamour in agriculture if it is so promising as purported by politicians bombarding youth with rhetoric of ‘self employment for financial independence’ ‘agriculture is the future’ we can sing these empty promises on the corridors of colleges but graduates will not heed.

 

We could play it on radio but the migrating youth leaving the village having abandoned their farms will not exit the buses and return home. In fact all their thinking is good riddance dirt, hallo city glamour lights, they are not going back and they will not miss that jembe.

 

We have left agriculture to rot away like the manure on the abandoned farms. We have left the farmers to worsen from peasants to downright beggars in tatters. It is appalling to then realise that, these marginalise, abandoned group is 80 per cent of the entire country!

 

In other words, we have abandoned ourselves!

 

Is it any surprise then that the youth are doing all they can to get away from farming? Have we given them reason to like and pursue agriculture?

 

On the contrary, the only news of agriculture seems to be bad or worse, if it is not climate change then it is conflict between the two agriculturalists, farmers and pastoralists.

 

 Agriculture has been left out of the branding companies scope, no one is trying to make agriculture glamourous.

 

If you are thinking but agriculture is not glamourous, then you are evidence of this misconception. When we speak of diamond, even with Hollywood movie and attachment of blood and killings, the picture that comes to mind is not of children working in mines, wage labourors struggling in mine pits or chopped up bodies from illegal trade gone bad. 

 

No! We see our movie star and favourite singer in clothes that salivate for and what is on their neck and hand, a diamond necklace, earrings, bracelet and ring, that’s what comes to mind when we say diamond. This is because diamond has been branded as such and we all know the power of branding; fly to China and you can be sure your Coca Cola will be the same as the one you left in Dar es Salaam, half a world away. 

 

We no longer even associate the fine linen our movie stars wear with agriculture, yet the cotton came from a field in Musoma and the fine leather on their shoes from cows in Arusha.

 

We have gone so far from agriculture we don’t even associate the fine dining meals in five star hotels with farming.

 

Who thinks of the poor fisherman in his tatters when they order a Red snapper or of the maize farmer when we order our ugali, similar plight has been fallen the pastoralists, no one connects the fine nyama choma too a struggling Maasai arming himself to take on the farmers he believes are taking all his grazing lands.

 

We can make agriculture glamourous by associating it with the final products. This association will help in fact increase knowledge of value chains that we keep commanding farmers to undertake. 

 

If we informed the farmer that his maize doesn’t have to be ugali alone but rather it can contribute to toothpaste all the way to baby dipers, yes maize in its long value chain even goes into tyre making processes.

 

Even the farming process is self doesn’t have to be doom and gloom with hand hoes that the first Neanderthals used. Where are the hand driven power hoes, tractors and harvesters? Where are the boots and gloves, where are the modern methods and equipment why do we leave out Information and communication technology when it comes to agriculture?

 

Even with the little we have done, like penetrate mobile phone to rural areas but we still charge farmers to receive market price messages (with exception of few service providers). Farmers still have to buy internet data and they suffer advertisement bombardment like all of us so much that they quit using the internet all together.

 

Why are we not setting up our own networks of information and availing them free of advertisement and at no cost to the farmers?

It is worth noting that we only get what we dish out, what is that Christian saying, garbage in garbage out! 

 

We keep conveying agriculture as dirt filled, sweat soaked industry and we can expect the youth to shun it.

 

Increasingly the only ones left to farm are elderly grandparents and their grandchildren sent back home from the city folk who find themselves lost in the city lights. They barley make enough to care for themselves let alone for their folks they have left at home.

 

 Yet now that they are in the city loop of, ‘earn only enough to come back tomorrow’ they are caught in the cycle of infinity, the cycle of poverty. 

 

They admit that there is no glamour in the city but at least there are hospitals and transport. They dare not return to the abandoned farms for there is neither electricity nor water, nor clinic no transport. The rural areas remain as undeveloped as they were time immemorial.

 

Let us brand agriculture for the economic potentials it holds, the magic it wields in value chain transformations and the wholesome direct engagement it gives with the earth. Let us highlight the glamour in agriculture.