Agriculture's next generation is ready to lead, but the systems around them are not yet built to let them. AMEA's Youth Empowerment Workstream has released a new position paper that reframes how the sector understands and supports young people across the agri-food system, moving beyond a single age bracket to a life-stage approach that reflects how youth actually engage with farming and agribusiness over time.
Beyond age, toward opportunity
Youth are too often defined by a single, broad age range. This paper argues for a more nuanced view, categorizing young people into three life stages, each with distinct needs and opportunities:
- Early Youth (12–18 years): the formative years for shaping career and professional identity, where entrenched perceptions of agriculture as a viable or outdated livelihood take hold as early as age 14–15.
- Transitional Youth (18–25 years): a period of entry into tertiary education or economic life, marked by entrepreneurial drive but constrained by limited access to capital, land, and cooperative leadership roles.
- Established Youth (25–35 years): young people with real experience in farming, agribusiness, or cooperatives, positioned for leadership but still held back by risk-averse lending and restrictive governance structures.
What the evidence shows
Drawing on case studies from across AMEA's network, including ACDI/VOCA, FAO, Rikolto, Cordaid, NCBA CLUSA, Heifer International, and Root Capital, the paper identifies practical, tested approaches for each life stage:
- Partnering with schools and building youth-led agritech curiosity to spark early interest.
- Strengthening youth roles in agri-service delivery and reforming cooperative bylaws to lower barriers to membership and leadership for transitional youth.
- Unlocking innovative, lower-collateral finance and embedding youth in value chain leadership and institutional partnerships for established youth.
Across all three stages, the paper points to a consistent theme: when institutional support is available, youthful adaptability and innovation strengthen the entire value chain.
A call for intentional inclusion
The paper is candid about the limits of counting farmers reached as a proxy for inclusion. True inclusion means addressing the specific barriers facing young women, persons with disabilities, and displaced populations, and recognizing that youth are disproportionately exposed to shocks such as conflict, climate variability, and economic disruption. Meeting this challenge calls for youth-sensitive responses, from psychosocial support and safety nets to education reintegration and enabling policy environments.
The path forward
AMEA's Youth Empowerment Workstream closes with a direct call to action for members, farmer organizations, and cooperatives: launch youth co-creation workshops, reform membership models to lower barriers to entry, and ensure young people help shape the paper's future updates. As the paper puts it, youth are not a problem to be solved. They are a solution to the challenges facing food systems today.
Read the full position paper to explore the complete framework, case studies, and recommendations for embedding youth inclusion across farmer organizations and agri-SMEs.