Preparing Youth for Agri-preneurship Development

Agriculture has long been the backbone of India’s economy, sustaining millions of livelihoods and delivering 18.4% (https://www.upag.gov.in/dash-reports/gvaagri) of the nation’s Gross Value Added (GVA) in recent years. It remains the largest source of employment, especially in rural areas. Yet, the sector faces persistent and emerging challenges such as climate change, land degradation, fragmented small land holdings, limited technological integration in farming, optimizing water use, harnessing monsoon rains, over-reliance on monsoons, crop and livestock diseases, post-harvest losses, and highly volatile market prices. Addressing these complex issues requires a workforce that is not only skilled and knowledgeable but also innovative and entrepreneurial underscoring the vital role of agricultural education in securing the sector’s future profitability and sustainability. There is the need for technology integration and entrepreneurship in agriculture to address challenges such as population growth and decreasing land holdings. Also, there is a need to prepare students for future scenarios with limited land availability and the importance of diversifying agricultural education to include animal husbandry. The education system should shift focus from producing job seekers to nurturing job creators through entrepreneurship and startup-ecosystem training. A brainstorming session on “Preparing Future-Ready Youths for Entrepreneurship Development in Agriculture” was organized to stimulate policy innovations and also Institutional reforms in academics, paving way in building students for more meaningful lives and work roles and enabling economic independence of learners capable of global competence. This would encourage higher agricultural education (HAE) Institutions to shape new generation youth in agriculture and allied fields and motivate all stakeholders, educationists, policy makers in contributing to fulfilling the aspiration of the Viksit Bharat.