Why Kenya’s Youth Aren’t Farming: The Future of Agriculture at Risk
Agriculture has long been the backbone of Kenya’s economy, contributing 26% of GDP directly and another 27% through linkages with other sectors. It employs over 40% of the total population and sustains more than 70% of rural Kenyans. Yet despite its centrality to national life, the sector faces an existential crisis: Kenya’s youth are abandoning farming in droves, leaving behind an aging population of subsistence farmers ill-equipped to feed a rapidly growing nation.
The statistics are stark. Youth agricultural employment has plummeted from 58.9% in 1990 to just 28.5% by 2020. Of Kenya’s approximately 7 million registered farmers, only 1.7 million—roughly 24%—are young people. More troubling still, research shows that only 20% of young Kenyans aspire to become farmers, even though youth comprise 78% of the population and 64% of the unemployed. Between 2015 and 2020, an estimated 277,000 youth migrated annually from rural to urban areas, driven by rural unemployment rates of 17.3% compared to 13.8% in cities. The average age of Kenya’s farmers now exceeds 60 years.
This demographic exodus threatens more than just agricultural output—it imperils Kenya’s food security, economic stability, and social cohesion at precisely the moment when the country’s population is projected to reach 60 million by 2030.
The Perfect Storm: Why Youth Are Walking Away
The conventional narrative suggests that young Kenyans simply don’t want to farm—that they’re seduced by urban glamour and disconnected from the land. The reality is far more complex and damning. Youth aren’t rejecting farming; they’re rejecting a broken system that has consistently failed to provide the basic conditions for agricultural success.
Economic Barriers That Cannot Be Ignored
Most young Kenyans face insurmountable economic obstacles to farming. Land ownership remains concentrated among older generations, leaving youth without access to the fundamental asset required for agriculture. Those who do manage to farm encounter a gauntlet of financial challenges: limited access to affordable credit, exploitative middlemen who capture most of the value chain, delayed or unpredictable payments, and markets that offer no guarantees of purchase or fair prices.
The current unemployment picture underscores the severity of the crisis. With overall unemployment at 12.7% and youth unemployment at a staggering 67%, young people entering the workforce face bleak prospects. Over one million youth enter the labor market annually, many without skills, creating immense pressure to seek any available income source—and farming, as currently structured, simply doesn’t compete. The financial equation is brutally simple: farming requires upfront capital for land, seeds, fertilizer, and equipment, with returns that may take months to materialize and are subject to weather, pests, and market volatility.
Meanwhile, the informal urban economy—however precarious—offers the possibility of daily cash flow. For a young person supporting family members or struggling to meet basic needs, the choice is less about preference than survival. Climate change has intensified these economic risks. Increasingly erratic rainfall, prolonged droughts, and unpredictable growing seasons have made rain-fed agriculture a gamble many young people cannot afford to take. Without access to irrigation, crop insurance, or climate-adaptive technologies, small-scale farming has become a high-stakes bet with odds stacked against success.
The Image Problem: Farming as Failure
Beyond the economics lies a powerful cultural barrier: the perception of farming as a last resort for those who have “failed” in school or urban life. This stigma is deeply entrenched and reinforced daily through multiple channels.
Social media has fundamentally reshaped career aspirations among young Kenyans. Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube celebrate quick money, tech jobs, forex trading, content creation, and white-collar lifestyles. The “urban hustle” is aggressively glamorized, often detached from its actual success rates. Very few young people see farmers portrayed as successful, innovative, or aspirational figures, despite agriculture being one of the few sectors with genuine scale potential.
In this environment, farming struggles not just against poor policy but against a narrative that insists success must be urban, clean, and digital—even when data suggests otherwise. The association of agriculture with “dirty hands” and rural hardship becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: as educated youth avoid farming, the sector remains trapped in low-productivity subsistence methods, which in turn reinforces the perception of farming as backward.
Yet here’s the striking irony: 77% of youth from villages where crop farming is the primary economic activity express strong interest in agricultural work. The problem isn’t that young people hate farming—it’s that the system has made it nearly impossible for them to succeed in it.
Broken Promises: When Policy Meets Practice
Successive Kenyan governments have announced youth-focused programs designed to reverse agricultural decline. The Youth Enterprise Development Fund, agricultural input subsidies, and youth agribusiness grants were meant to unlock capital and inputs for young farmers. On paper, these initiatives appear comprehensive and well-intentioned. In practice, they have largely failed to reach their intended beneficiaries.
Access to these programs is often opaque, politicized, and bureaucratic. Funds are delayed, inadequately disbursed, or captured by individuals with political connections rather than farmers with viable projects. Subsidized fertilizer frequently arrives late or is diverted before reaching small-scale farmers. Irrigation and mechanization programs remain pilots that never scale beyond demonstration projects.
This is where the “tenderpreneur” economy becomes relevant. Money allocated for tractors, irrigation equipment, extension services, and training is routinely absorbed at the procurement stage—spent on feasibility studies, overpriced contracts, or politically connected suppliers—while actual farms remain untouched. Agriculture becomes a business opportunity for contractors, not farmers.
As agricultural economist Prof. Shem Migot-Adholla has repeatedly argued, Kenya’s problem is not a lack of policy but a failure of implementation. Weak institutions, fragmented responsibility between national and county governments, and incentives that reward rent-seeking over results have created a credibility crisis. Young people no longer believe government agriculture programs are meant for them.
Until public agricultural spending is measured by tangible outcomes—yields, farmer incomes, youth participation—rather than budgets and launch ceremonies, Kenya’s fields will remain empty and its promises broken.
The Cost of Inaction: A Nation at Risk
The consequences of agricultural decline extend far beyond the farm gate, creating cascading risks to economic stability, food security, and social cohesion.
Economic Ripple Effects
When agriculture weakens, the entire economy suffers. Declining domestic food production drives prices upward, contributing directly to inflation and eroding household purchasing power, especially for the urban poor who spend a large share of income on food. As farming contracts, upstream and downstream jobs disappear: transporters, millers, traders, processors, and input suppliers all feel the squeeze.
Food price spikes in Kenya have historically coincided with periods of heightened social tension, protests, and political instability. Food is not merely an economic good—it functions as a social stabilizer. The 2025 experience illustrates this vividly: high food prices ranked as the second biggest burden on Kenyan households at 25%, just behind unemployment at 26%.
The Import Dependency Trap
As local production fails to keep pace with population growth, Kenya becomes increasingly dependent on imports for staples like maize, wheat, and rice. Food imports already represent approximately 18.8% of total merchandise imports. This exposes the country to global supply chain shocks—wars, export bans, climate disasters, and currency fluctuations—none of which Kenya controls.
When global prices rise or supply tightens, the cost is immediately passed on to Kenyan consumers, while government subsidies strain public finances. In such a system, national food security is effectively outsourced to global markets, leaving millions vulnerable to decisions made far beyond Kenya’s borders.
Geopolitical Vulnerability
The geopolitical implications are severe. History demonstrates that food crises can destabilize nations, intensify inequality, and fuel conflict—both within countries and across borders. In regions already facing climate stress and unemployment, food shortages can accelerate rural-urban migration, increase cross-border displacement, and strain regional security.
For Kenya, positioned as an economic anchor in East Africa, sustained food insecurity would weaken its regional influence and internal cohesion. The country faces a choice with compounding consequences: invest now in revitalizing agriculture, or accept escalating economic, social, and geopolitical risks.
With a population projected to reach 60 million by 2030, Kenya cannot feed itself on the backs of elderly subsistence farmers alone. The question isn’t whether the country can afford to lose its youth from farming—it’s whether it can survive it.
Sowing the Seeds of Change: A Path Forward
Despite the daunting challenges, a different future is already emerging in pockets across Kenya. Youth-led agribusinesses are demonstrating that farming can be profitable, innovative, and technologically sophisticated.
The Innovation Frontier
Across Kenya, young entrepreneurs are redefining agriculture through technology. Hydroponic and greenhouse farming around urban centers is producing higher yields on smaller plots, making agriculture viable even without extensive land ownership. Agritech applications are linking farmers directly to markets and input suppliers, cutting out exploitative middlemen. Precision tools like mobile soil testing and digital extension services are reducing costs and losses.
These models prove that agriculture doesn’t have to be manual, isolated, or low-income. When innovation replaces tradition, farming can be data-driven, scalable, and profitable. Young farmers using these approaches are achieving returns that rival or exceed urban employment while building assets and equity.
Policy Must Catch Up
If the government is serious about youth participation in agriculture, it must move beyond announcements to genuine implementation. This requires several critical interventions:
Land Access Reform: Protect agricultural land through zoning regulations, create transparent youth land-leasing programs, and facilitate access to communal and underutilized public land for young farmers.
Infrastructure Investment: Expand affordable irrigation infrastructure to reduce climate risk. Make mechanization accessible through shared equipment pools and cooperative ownership models.
Financial System Redesign: Create youth-specific agricultural finance that favors production over paperwork. Grants should be tied to measurable output, not political connections. Establish crop insurance programs that protect young farmers from climate-related losses.
Guaranteed Markets: Link agricultural production to guaranteed institutional buyers through school feeding programs, hospitals, prisons, and other public institutions. This provides the market certainty young farmers need to invest.
Value Addition Support: Provide processing infrastructure and training that allows farmers to move up the value chain, capturing more revenue from their production.
Agriculture must be treated as an industrial sector—not a poverty intervention—with incentives that reward efficiency, value addition, and long-term investment.
Cultural Transformation
Changing the narrative around farming is equally crucial. This starts with how agriculture is viewed and discussed—online, in schools, and in communities. Success stories of young agripreneurs need greater visibility. Agricultural education should emphasize business models, technology integration, and entrepreneurship, not just traditional farming techniques.
Media, influencers, and educators have a role in reshaping perceptions, showcasing farming not as a fallback but as a viable pathway to wealth creation and innovation. When a young person growing tomatoes hydroponically and selling direct to restaurants can earn more than an entry-level office worker—and this becomes widely known—career calculations change.
Youth Agency and Action
The path forward is not only for policymakers. Young Kenyans themselves have agency in this transformation. This means:
- Exploring farming not just as labor but as business, forming cooperatives that provide economies of scale
- Leveraging available technology to reduce risk and increase efficiency
- Learning from those already succeeding and sharing knowledge through networks
- Demanding accountability in public agricultural spending through civic engagement
- Supporting initiatives that prioritize production and farmer welfare over political patronage
Conclusion: An Urgent Imperative
Kenya stands at a crossroads. The agricultural sector that has sustained the nation for generations is hemorrhaging its future workforce. An aging population of subsistence farmers cannot feed a nation of 60 million people. The youth exodus from rural areas isn’t a trend that will naturally reverse—it’s a crisis that will intensify without decisive action.
The challenges are real and structural: lack of land access, inadequate capital, climate volatility, exploitative markets, and entrenched cultural stigma. But the solutions are equally clear: secure land tenure for youth, expand irrigation and mechanization, create transparent financing mechanisms, guarantee markets, and transform the narrative around farming.
What’s required now is political will—not for more policy announcements and photo opportunities, but for genuine implementation measured by results. Kenya’s food future will not be secured by speeches or imports, but by a generation willing to reclaim the land, modernize how it is used, and insist that agriculture works for them.
The alternative is a country increasingly dependent on imported food, vulnerable to global shocks, and unable to provide opportunities for millions of young people. That is a future Kenya cannot afford.
Kenya’s struggle to attract its youth back to farming is not merely a cultural shift—it is a warning about the future of food security, innovation, and economic independence. Without reimagining agriculture as a space for technology, creativity, and dignity, the country risks losing both its land and its next generation of producers. At EyeAfrica.news, we continue to explore the deeper systems shaping Africa’s future. For further insight, we invite readers to explore “The Innovation Ceiling: How Conservative Thinking Is Limiting Africa’s Leap into the Future,” which examines mindset barriers holding back progress, and “Unfair Trade Policies and Their Impact on African Industries,” a critical look at global rules that undermine local production.
