Are Rural Youth in Ethiopia Abandoning Agriculture

By Sosina Bezu, Stein T. Holden. 2014

386 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study examines current land access and livelihood choices of rural youth in Southern Ethiopia. We found that youth in rural south have limited access to agricultural land because of land scarcity and land market restrictions. We hypothesize that this forces the youth to abandon agriculture in search of other livelihoods. Our study shows that only 9% of the rural youth plan to pursue agriculture as their livelihood. We also found a sharp increase in youth outmigration in the past six years. Our econometric analyses confirm that lack of land access is forcing the youth away from an agricultural livelihood.

Subfields: General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1100ebab342f7225e36268f1eb5381589b849c28

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

1. T. Jayne
2. M. Muyanga
3. Jordan Chamberlin
4. N. Sitko
5. W. Anseeuw
6. Ayala Wineman
7. A. Chapoto
8. Hosaena Ghebru

In Soil Science

1. T. Jayne
2. M. Muyanga
3. Jordan Chamberlin
4. Hosaena Ghebru
5. N. Sitko
6. F. Yeboah
7. W. Anseeuw

Citations in the corpus

• Africa’s Evolving Employment Trends (2018, background): “…that the majority of individuals within the 15–24 year age bracket still reside with their parents or remain dependent on their parents for their sustenance (Bezu & Holden, 2014), their current employment situation would at least partially reflect their parents’ family labour allocation decisions.”
• The Effect of Land Access on Youth Employment and Migration Decisions: Evidence from Rural Ethiopia (2018, neutral): “The survey covered 27 rural kebeles (the lowest formal administrative unit in Ethiopia, also known as peasant associations, communities, or sub-districts) of the Amhara and Oromia regions.”
• Are medium‐scale farms driving agricultural transformation in sub‐Saharan Africa? (2019, background): “Young people from these communities will find access more difficult, which will increase their likelihood of exiting farming and/or migrating out of the area (Bezu & Holden, 2014; Chimhowu & Woodhouse, 2006; Knapman et al., 2017; Kocec, Ghebru, Holtemeyer, Mueller, & Schmidt, 2018).”
• Africa's changing farm size distribution patterns: the rise of medium-scale farms (2016, background): “Bezu and Holden (2014) find that young people’s probability of migrating to urban areas in search of jobs is inversely related to the amount of land owned by their parents and the number of siblings competing for their parents’ land.”