Agriculture is considered as a leading source of employment while ensuring food security to the world and especially rural communities. However, the youth do not appear to be interested in the agricultural sector due to various reasons such as their perceptions and aspirations towards the sector. This research intends to explore whether perceptions, aspirations and access to resources affect youth participation in agriculture and related economic activities, under rain-fed production in two regions of the Free State province of South Africa. Principal component analysis was used to determine perception dimensions, while a probit model was used to investigate the effect of capital (human, social, physical, financial and natural), the perception dimensions and the respondents’ agricultural aspirations on agricultural participation. The results showed that the aspirations of youth do not affect their decision to participate in the agricultural sector. However, exposure to agriculture and support systems can increase youth participation in the industry. Results also show that grants, which are an easy source of income, and the uneducated and comfort perception dimension hinders youth participation in agriculture.

Youth participation in the agricultural sector remains key to addressing youth unemployment. Young people represent a heterogeneous social group with markedly diverse social and economic needs that require tailor-made support interventions to enhance their participation in agricultural activities. The main objective of this article was to develop distinct youth typologies informed by diverse endowment of livelihood assets, including the psychological assets and entrepreneurial characteristics that shape young people’s career and livelihood choices, including participation in agriculture. A two-stage multivariate analytical approach was applied using principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis (CA) to formulate youth typologies. Seven clusters were identified. The seven distinct clusters representing youth typologies were named “Training beneficiaries with access to extension”, “Job secure”, “Females endowed with negative psychological capital”, “Opportunist and determined livestock farmers”, “Social grant reliant”, “Resource poor traditional livestock farmers” and “Non-farming income with access to credit”. The results confirm that young people are indeed a heterogeneous group with diverse support needs. Unpacking the interrelated and multidimensional complexities among the youth is a vital take-off point to inform effective policy and tailor-made support interventions and effectively foster active youth participation in agriculture and related activities. We argue that support initiatives should not only address access to physical resources, but should also foster the development of soft skills such as entrepreneurial skills and boosting the psychological capital of young people while addressing gender inequalities.

The development of youth to actively engage in agriculture could address the persistent youth unemployment problem. For youth to actively engage in agriculture, adequate access to key productive resources is necessary. The main aim of this article is to develop and validate tailor-made development pathways based on the characteristics of four youth typologies, addressing the constrained access to key livelihood capitals, and to enhance the participation of youth in agriculture. The pathways are developed based on the Modified Sustainable Livelihood Framework (MSLF), which includes six livelihood capitals, namely, physical, natural, social, financial, human and psychological capitals. Four pathways were developed and named Business-oriented, Gender-oriented, Occupation-oriented and Livestock-oriented. Through focus group discussions, the pathways were validated to determine whether they can be used successfully to facilitate the participation of youths in agriculture. The results confirm that tailor-made development pathways can be used to develop youth characterised by the typology that informed that pathway, to actively engage in agriculture. The implementation of support strategies to support youth in agriculture, should therefore, be guided by the specific needs of different typologies. This allows for the coordination and coherence of youth support initiatives to enhance access to resources, which can yield improvements to desired development outcomes compared to initiatives implemented as piecemeals.

Government efforts to encourage youth participation in the agricultural sector through support initiatives have yet to realise the envisioned outcomes. With research primarily considering the factors influencing youth participation in the agricultural sector, involvement in agricultural support initiatives is rarely considered. The main aim of the research is to explore whether differences in access to assets within the Modified Sustainable Livelihood Framework influence youth participation in support initiatives. Data was collected between 2018 and 2021 from 369 randomly selected youth from QwaQwa and Thaba' Nchu in the Free State Province, South Africa. The regression results confirmed that participation in support initiatives is low. Already being involved in the sector, marital status, cooperative membership, and social grants were used for inputs as the exogenous factors and resilience and optimism as endogenous factors representing psychological capital were found to enhance participation in support initiatives. Youth need to draw on their endogenous capabilities to seek and access support initiatives while also seeking options to access livelihood assets. This will complement the efforts by governments and other institutions to enhance their participation in the sector. We recommend that policies consider that youth are not involved in the sector and have limited resource access. Secondly, the policies should motivate youth to achieve self-sustainability in their operations and not depend on unearned money such as grants.

The South African government has put legislation in place to exercise better control over irrigation water usage. Thus, proper planning of irrigation areas and scheduling of irrigation events in order to stay within water quotas has become more important. Currently, the available methodologies to assist irrigation farmers overlook the complexities and interrelated relationships between crop-area planning and the multi-stage nature of irrigation-scheduling decisions within a stochastic dynamic environment. This paper contributes to knowledge through the development of a bio-economic model that uses evolutionary algorithms to optimise water use, taking cognisance of the complex interrelationships between crop-area planning, the multistage decision-making nature of irrigation-scheduling decisions, and the stochastic dynamic environment under conditions of limited water supply. The results show that gross margin variability is reduced and the expected outcomes are improved due to improved irrigation-scheduling decisions made sequentially in multiple stages. Multi-stage decisions tend to make the impact of risk aversion less profound because taking account of unfolding weather information is risk reducing. Ignoring the risk-reducing impact of sequential decision-making will over-estimate the cost of water restrictions. Caution is hence necessary when formulating agricultural water-allocation policies based on crop water optimisation models that overlook the complex nature of irrigation decisions.

Supporting youth in actively participating in agriculture is crucial to ensuring food security and promoting economic growth. Yet, the active engagement of youth remains constrained by development frameworks that overlook their heterogeneity and by fragmented support initiatives. The article aims to develop an integrated development pathway consisting of a pool of strategies that empowers heterogeneous youth to actively participate in agriculture. Drawing on support strategies emerging from a literature review of stakeholder and typology-driven development pathways that aim to enhance participation in agriculture, an integrated development pathway is proposed, considering the six livelihood capitals (Natural, Financial, Physical, Human, Social, and Psychological) represented within the Modified Sustainable Livelihood Framework. The integrated pathway provides a bottom-up approach to development that empowers youth to choose their own specific strategies from a suggested pool, including diverse support strategies. Focusing on suggesting diverse strategies along a development pathway to enhance access to livelihood capitals provides a functional self-help tool that can effectively develop youth to engage in agriculture. The proposed reconceptualisation of youth development provides a facilitative rather than directive process that can serve as a roadmap for policy and other development partners in implementing effective youth development initiatives.