The average age of the Kenyan farmer is 55 years. Most of the youth in Kenya are more focussed on moving into the big city and get white and blue-collar jobs, leaving this delicate art of agriculture to the old who should be relaxing enjoying their pension and sunset years. This fact has led Amiran Kenya, an agriculture supplies company, to starting an initiative for encouraging the youth to venture into agriculture which can also provide a good living if not better than white-collar jobs.
Facebook Farmers is the brainchild of Amiran Kenya and Yatta CDF Committee, the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), the Ministry of Youth as well as the Youth Enterprise Development Fund. It mainly targets the youth who are tech savvy and who are mostly found on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google+…
The plan is to install the Amiran Farmer’s Kit (a greenhouse, drip irrigation system, water tank, seeds, and fertilizers. It also comes with training, agro-support and much more) in every secondary school in the country and develop interest among the youth at an early stage. They also train the youth in basic business skills like marketing, book-keeping, to further drive the point of agribusiness.
Another Public Private Partnership is the ‘Next generation farmers initiative’ where Amiran Kenya again is partnering with the ministry of youth affairs in setting up greenhouses in youth polytechnics across the country. 
These initiatives are mainly for involving the youth in agriculture at an early stage of learning. Amiran Kenya has bundled a product that includes a greenhouse, drip irrigation kit, high quality seeds, agrochemicals, fertilizer and training – commonly known as the Amiran Farmer’s Kit which has transformer farmers lives across the East African region, boosting productivity by up to 1000%.
What do you think about these initiatives? Please share your thoughts below…
I think Amiran & co are on the right track here. I was however a little surprised not to find an actual Facebook Farmers page.