Abstract:
In recent years there has been a growing literature on youth and livelihood
opportunities in agriculture. However, the extent to which such engagement
in agriculture improves the livelihood of youth has hardly attracted scholarly
attention. Consequently, a convergent parallel mixed method design was
adopted to examine the contribution of vegetable farming to livelihood
outcomes among the youth. A two-stage sampling technique was used to
select 250 respondents for the study. A checklist was used to gather qualitative
data while structured questionnaire was used to gather quantitative data. Five
livelihood indicators were used to construct the index. Each livelihood indicator
was measured by three sub-indicators which were measured in a 3 point Likert
scale (low, medium and high livelihood outcomes) Ordinal logistic regression
model (OLRM) was employed to determine the chances of the youths’ livelihood
outcome levels being high due to vegetable farming. More than half (58%) of
the respondents had attained high level of livelihood outcomes. Interestingly,
a weak impact of vegetable farming was noted in improved human and social
capital in such a way that improvement in the livelihoods can only be achieved
by cultivating more land. Results from OLRM revealed that land size, vegetable
variety and education were the most significant (p≤ 0.05) predictors of the
livelihood outcomes. Conclusively, vegetable farming has the potential of
improving livelihoods. However, the main challenge is not just one of engaging
the youth in agriculture but equipping them with farming and entrepreneurial
skills to enable them realise their ambition in farming. The local government
in collaborations with the youth and academic/research institutions are urged
to address these challenges when designing intervention for improving the
livelihoods of youth through agriculture.
