A large rural youth population and a growing domestic demand for diversified foods in many developing countries represent a unique opportunity to advance towards the three objectives of decent job creation for youth, food security and sustainable production, as spelled out in Agenda 2030. Yet, challenges to seizing this opportunity remain. Across the developing world, rural youth are turning their backs on small-scale agriculture. The gap between rural youth job aspirations and the reality of the labour market is widening. Under-development in rural areas makes it difficult to tap into the potential for increasing and changing domestic consumption needs and providing young people with decent jobs and living standards.

Rural youth today constitute the majority of the youth population in many developing countries. Most of them are engaged in subsistence farming and struggle to find better-paying jobs to escape poverty. What is becoming increasingly clear is that rural youth are turning their backs on small-scale agriculture; they have high expectations, do not want to farm, and aspire to better jobs elsewhere. Yet, a growing local and regional demand for food in many parts of the developing world represents a unique untapped opportunity to advance towards the triple objectives of decent job creation for rural youth, food security, and sustainable production. The question for policy makers, therefore, is how to make rural youth the drivers of more productive and environmentally sustainable agri-food activities that respond to changing local and regional consumption needs and provide them with decent jobs aligned with their expectations.

A large rural youth population and a growing domestic demand for diversified foods in many developing countries represent a unique opportunity to advance towards the three objectives of decent job creation for youth, food security, and sustainable production as spelled out in Agenda 2030. Yet, challenges to seizing this opportunity remain. Most developing countries still need to promote more productive and environmentally sustainable agri-food activities that can meet changing domestic consumption needs, create decent job opportunities for their large rural youth populations, and help close the gap between rural jobs and what youth aspire to. Developing countries can make this happen, but decisions and actions need to be taken today.

One in six persons in the world today is a youth. The majority of young people in developing countries reside in rural settings and most of them want to change their current employment situation and do not want to farm. Career aspirations of rural youth are as high as youth in urban areas but the labour market offers few decent wage employment opportunities. This chapter explores data from 24 developing countries to look in detail at the education and employment status of rural young people, their career aspirations and the gap with the reality of the labour market. It identifies factors that drive job satisfaction among rural youth.

Growth in demand for value-added food and processed agricultural products in developing countries is an opportunity to develop the agro-industries for youth employment creation. However, challenges remain in enabling small-scale farmers and low-skilled rural youth to integrate into local and global agricultural value chains and move up the ladder to meet the quantity and quality standards required for both national and export markets. Examples in this chapter describe different interventions at the local level that can help integrate rural youth into the agricultural value chain and provide them with employment opportunities. It draws success factors for integrating youth into agricultural value chains using a youth employment lens.

Without structural transformation happening fast enough in rural areas to create more employment in a sustainable manner, the vast majority of rural youth in developing countries have little choice but to be self-employed in the informal sector, take up poorly paid jobs, or migrate for better opportunities. The increasing demand for diversified and processed food in developing countries is, however, offering the opportunity for rural economies to create various types of jobs along the agricultural value chains, both upstream and downstream. This chapter provides recommendations to policy makers in adopting a comprehensive and local approach to rural economic development to make rural areas attractive again to young people.