Young people’s perspectives on farming in Ghana: a Q study

James Sumberg; Thomas Yeboah; Justin Flynn; Nana Akua Anyidoho

doi:10.1007/s12571-016-0646-y

Young people’s perspectives on farming in Ghana: a Q study

James Sumberg, Thomas Yeboah, Justin Flynn, Nana Akua Anyidoho

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

53 Citations (Scopus)

61 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

An emerging orthodoxy suggests that agriculture is the key to addressing the youth employment challenge in Africa. The analysis that informs this orthodoxy identifies a number of persistent barriers to increased productivity; and the programmes that work to get young people engaged with agriculture make assumptions about the young people’s interests and behaviours. In this paper we report results from a study with secondary students in Ghana using Q Methodology. The objective was to determine to what degree the students’ perspectives were aligned with the main tenants of the emerging orthodoxy. Results show that different perspectives on the two questions (What explains young people’s attitude toward farming? What should be done about young people and farming?) can be identified. There are a number of points of convergence between the students’ perspectives and the new orthodoxy. However, two important points of divergence were also identified, and the impications of these are discussed.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	151-161
Number of pages	11
Journal	Food Security
Volume	9
Issue number	1
Early online date	13 Jan 2017
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-016-0646-y
Publication status	Published - 1 Feb 2017
Externally published	Yes

Bibliographical note

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author(s) and/ or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.

Keywords

Africa
Agricultural transformation
Employment
Rural development

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Food Science
Development
Agronomy and Crop Science

Access to Document

10.1007/s12571-016-0646-yLicence: CC BY

PublishedFinal published version, 2.4 MBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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Young people’s perspectives on farming in Ghana: a Q study

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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