Agriculture, My Greatest Enemy Has Turned Out to Be My Best Friend

The Young Africa Works Summit aims to bring together a community dedicated to finding solutions to youth unemployment in Africa. One of our primary goals for the Summit is to engage young people, ensuring their voices, perspectives and ideas are heard. As part of this, we will be sharing a series of blogs written by young leaders working in the agricultural sector in Africa.

I am Fatumah Birungi from Uganda the last born of three children in the family. I grew up with only my mother who had to provide all the necessities we needed as children. She is a very hard-working woman who is always looking forward to seeing the success of her children.

So, at the age of nine I started to work. I found I could work on several farms in order to save money for my school fees. While working hard on the farms I became interested in sciences and I wanted to study at a high level. I earned a full scholarship to study agricultural science at EARTH University and I am currently in my second year of study.

Since childhood, my dream has been to improve the standards of living of many people, starting with my family, my community and also my country through a nursing profession. I thought that this was the best way to achieve my dream, even though I have experience in farming. It was never my wish to work in agriculture at any level. Young people in my country undervalue agricultural studies in comparison to other subjects. They often say ‘Agriculture is for people who didn’t go to school and don’t know how to read and write.’ Therefore a lot of youth tend to abandon agriculture in order to be free from disrespect, abuse and bullying. For this reason, a big percentage of youth don’t see any future in agriculture, and instead they prefer white collar jobs. They tend to think that it’s the worst profession one can ever attain in life, but it’s not true! I also used to think the same until I started to study at EARTH University, where I have learned to value nature and farming. I have come to know that agriculture does not only consists of growing plants, but also it also concerns our environment, employment, health, happiness, real wealth  plus all other good things one can think of.

Through my studies and field work at EARTH University, I feel that my mind has opened to the possibilities in agriculture and I feel inspired.  I can almost feel agriculture flowing through my blood.  I have recognized that so many professions can emerge from agriculture – it is a profession of hope. I am working with my classmates at EARTH to design an integrated farm with the main objective of inspiring and demonstrating to other youth in Uganda that agriculture is not what they think, that it’s a unique profession. We have hoped that as youth ourselves, we can change their perspectives about agriculture. Therefore, I am hoping that at the Young Africa Works Summit, I will learn things that I can apply to our project at EARTH University and attract more youth into agriculture.

I am glad to say that, my education is already benefiting my community. With only one year of study completed at EARTH University, I have been able to reach my community through a local radio station where I share my new-found knowledge with local farmers. I give them the ideas on how they can maximize available resources, how they can improve their food production and quality by applying manure and how they can integrate livestock on their farms. I realized that people in my community have a lot of resources but they don’t know how to best utilize them. By addressing environmental sustainability, I am trying to transmit the information about the importance of our environment. And I am sure that, since it increases income earnings, slowly their stands of living will improve.

“Once in life we need a doctor, a lawyer, a preacher, a teacher, and a policeman, but everyday three times a day we need a farmer” – Brenda Schoepp