The Global Farmer Network has several younger farmers in Africa who have been out front in efforts to reshape how agriculture is perceived in their countries and the continent as a whole. They’ve been working hard to bring a level of interest, excitement, modern approaches, positivity, scalability, accessability, profitability and entrepreneurship to their various efforts.
Check out the map of locations for Global Farmer Network members and the current list of GFN members.
So it was exciting to see this article in The New York Times, Millennials Make Farming Sexy in Africa, Where Tilling the Soil Once Meant Shame (excerpt below) highlighting this ongoing transformation. It immediately brought to mind discussions between farmers during Global Farmer Roundtables and several columns authored by GFN members from Africa.
We hope this helps gives you a sense of what some GFN members, those farmers interviewed in this article, and the many others involved across the continent are striving towards!
Millennials ‘Make Farming Sexy’ in Africa, Where Tilling the Soil Once Meant Shame
By Sarah Maslin Nir
AGOTIME BEH, Ghana After he graduated from university, Vozbeth Kofi Azumah was reluctant to tell anyone – even his mother – what he planned to do for a living. “I’m a farmer,” he said, buzzing his motorcycle between freshly plowed fields on a recent afternoon. “Here, that’s an embarrassment.”
In some parts of the world, farmers are viewed with respect and cultivating the land is seen as an honorable trade. But in a region where most agriculture is still for subsistence relying on cutlass, hoe and a hope for rain, farming is a synonym for poverty.
But Mr. Azumah is among a growing number of young, college-educated Africans fighting the stigma by seeking to professionalize farming. They are applying scientific approaches and data-crunching apps not just to increase yields, but to show that agriculture can be profitable.
They call themselves agripreneurs.
Read the original article at The New York Times – click here (subscription-based but several free articles per month available).