Young people from all across the world will once again join hands to commemorate International Youth Day (IYD) this Thursday, as they do since 1999. This year’s topic, “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health,” is rather unusual, and it’s made me wonder what precisely these phrases mean and why the United Nations (UN) picked this particular theme for the summit.
I considered what the word “food systems” includes, and what stood out to me from my “FBI” discoveries was what food systems is not. See, I frequently came across the words “not just how we get our food from farm to fork,” which prompted me to look into it more. In a nutshell, food production takes place in the fields, where it is harvested, and then transported/distributed in consistent clusters to food processing centers. These foods are packed and sold in retail stores, supermarkets, and other locations for end consumers to purchase and cook in the type of meals that you and I enjoy on a regular basis.
You urbanites, think about the piece of bread you ate yesterday and attempt to apply that to this system. Despite the fact that this method focuses on consumption and recycling in the end, most subsistence farmers skip all of the phases during the production stage and wind up at the consumption stage. However, this does not imply they are outside the food system because agriculture has long been Uganda’s backbone, with all policy rules, central government budget allocations, agricultural financial lending, agro-ecosystems, and so on controlled by agriculture.
Uganda’s economy is primarily dependent on agriculture, which employs around 65 percent of the working population, including 63 percent of Uganda’s youth. In rural regions, agriculture is the primary economic activity for most of these young people (National Strategy for Youth Employment in Agriculture 2017). Uganda’s population
is dominated by young people. teenagers are among the most vulnerable groups
when it comes to extreme poverty, with almost 92 percent of employed adolescents being poor (ILO, 2015a).
In order to accomplish Agenda 2030, which includes poverty reduction, social inclusion, health care, biodiversity protection, and climate change mitigation, it is important that young people play an active part in implementing this theme’s objectives. Due to their interconnectedness, the health and agricultural sectors should be given higher priority, as well as climate action.
As a result of Covid-19, the government of Uganda must boost its agricultural investment since a majority of the population is dependent on the informal sector, which is characterized by inadequate savings and investment, which in turn raises dependence levels among the people. As seen by the public’s growing demand for Covid assistance cash and food, the government is responding. To achieve this year’s IYD theme, we need the government’s help in terms of buffer reserves for agricultural surpluses.
Young people must thus push for their enhanced engagement in the decision-making process, fight for financing, and play an active role in protecting the world and climate in which they will live when they grow up and go. Agri-sustainability and youth engagement in agriculture will be improved by this.
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