 It's my pleasure to welcome you today to our World Food Day Celebration. World Food Day is held every 16th of October to promote awareness and most importantly action against hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition that affect hundreds of millions of people across the globe. This year FAO and ERI are celebrating World Food Day here at IRC with the theme Our actions are our future. A zero hunger world by 2030 is possible. This will be divided into two parts, a ceremonial activity followed by a panel discussion among representatives of key actors in achieving zero hunger. So without further ado, let's move on to the ceremony. May I please ask Dr. Kadiresan, Dr. Morel, Dr. McKellow, Ms. Carolyn and Mr. Lincoln to come up to the stage please. On the stage, the empty bowl represents where we are now, a world suffering from hunger and malnutrition. The act of filling the bowl with rice will represent our collective commitment in shaping the future by taking action today. Representing the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and Pacific, Dr. Kundavi Kadiresan. Representing the International Rice Research Institute, Director-General Dr. Matthew Morel. Representing the Science and Technology Community, Idi Technology for Development Lead Ms. Carolyn Flory. Representing Youth and the Private Sector, Rice Incorporated Co-Founder Mr. Lincoln Lee. And representing Government and National Institutions, Director of Technology Transfer, Knowledge Management and Capacity Building for the Kenya Ministry of Agricultural Livestock Fisheries and Irrigation, Dr. Margaret McKellow. On the count of three, may I ask our participants to pour their rice into the bowl. Here we go, three, two, one. The bowl of rice, filled rice now, symbolizes a world free from hunger and malnutrition by 2030. This ceremony also shows that no single actor can fill the bowl alone. We need to act in unison and partnership to achieve zero hunger. Thank you to our representatives for participating in this ceremony. May I request Dr. Kadiresan and Dr. Morel to return to their seats and the others to please join me here on the stage. Okay, let's move on to the second part of our program, the panel discussion. The theme for the discussion today is Towards Achieving a Zero Hunger World by 2030. How can youth lead the way? Global Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger, aims to end all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030, making sure all people, especially children, have access to sufficient and nutritious food all year round. To achieve it, we need to start engaging our future leaders, the youth, and help shape their actions. At the beginning of 2012, the world reached a historic milestone as the human population surpassed 7 billion, with more than half those people under the age of 30. In other words, we now have over three and a half million agents of change. Now more than ever, investing in this generation must be a global priority. At Erie, we envision young agricultural scientists developing innovations that will profoundly influence the way we grow food and distribute it. We see young farmers and agricultural entrepreneurs embracing interventions and techniques to produce foods that are nutritious, affordable, and sufficient for everyone on the planet. We call these young people Generation Zero because we believe this will be the generation that will make Zero Hunger possible. To start the discussion, let's go to Mr. Lee to get his perspectives on the role of youth in ensuring Zero Hunger through agribusiness. In particular, what in your experience has been the factors that you think motivates youth to go into agribusiness as an agriculture? And what can we do to inspire more young people, young men and women to do the same? Thank you for the question. I believe what inspires at least myself and my team. I'd just like to acknowledge my team, Kisum and Rachel and the friend. I believe what inspires youths are two main things. One that we want to know what we're doing has a purpose and has real-life impact when we start an enterprise. And second, just like any other individual, we want to have a good career. We want to make sure it's profitable and we can live a good life with it. And actually, achieving Zero Hunger and engaging in agriculture entrepreneurship fulfills the first. Because throughout at least our team's journey, we went through several startup accelerators and we actually saw a wide variety of teams that were focused in agriculture because they felt that due to the, I guess, slightly underdeveloped nature of the agriculture industry, it provided a lot of room for innovation and new ideas where youths could unleash their full creativity. And we saw everything from AI in irrigation to mobile applications for fertilizer. And so the motivation is definitely there. They definitely felt motivated to tackle food security with a focus in smallholder farmers. It's just the second part. There is a perception among the youth, whether fortunate or probably unfortunate, that engaging in agriculture is not a very attractive industry and that you basically won't be able to earn a lot of money. And because of this preconceived notion, when we engage in agriculture entrepreneurship, youth entrepreneurs face a problem because more often than not, the industry is very fragmented. And so it becomes very difficult to implement their ideas. And so many of them give up or it sort of solidifies their already preconceived perception that it's not as profitable and I should do other things. So I believe what needs to happen to fix this is we need to provide proper incentives for them to continue the enterprises. And the only way to do this is to create a not one solution, but an ecosystem that supports this network in particular three things. The first is investment. So I think only about 30% of all startup capital goes into rural based startups, while 70% goes to urban based ones, which doesn't make sense because the urban population depends on the rural population for sustenance. And second is education. So there is a lack of awareness among youths about the problems in agriculture and how it actually can help them create a purpose driven enterprise. But more than that, it's also that traditional curriculum doesn't really cover the basics of agriculture. It's not that we have, everyone has to study agriculture since young, but they should have a general knowledge of it. And thirdly and probably the most important is institutional support, both from the private and public sector, not just for mentorship and expertise, but to facilitate the implementation of their ideas. Because for us, the real change came when, we're really thankful to Erie because the real change for us came when we were able to implement our solutions. And when we went to all these accelerators, we saw that teams who were able to run a pilot or at least see their idea come to life, were a lot more successful than those who just kept talking about it. And so there needs to be a proper system to facilitate that. I believe with all these incentives in place, youths will be able to fulfill their potential in achieving their hunger. Thank you. Carolyn, we hear a lot about the role, the very important role, youth can play in digital agriculture. And also digitization being one of the most important factors that can attract youth into agriculture and agribusinesses. What's your perspective on that? And what do you think it would take to make that a reality? Thank you for the question, Ranjita. And thank you for the invitation to participate in this very esteemed panel. So when I think about the use of technology, I always go back to the challenges, right? So no matter what this sector, be it agriculture, be it health, education. And so I really want to start, take a step back and think about what are the core challenges for why youths are not engaged in agriculture right now? And so Lincoln mentioned a number of them that are affecting our particular sector and thinking about farming as an occupation that is very difficult physically, mentally. It's when there's a perceived lack of opportunity, incomes, low productivity. That means that youth are not going to achieve the same income that they think that they could get in urban areas. And there's also a social status associated with being a farmer that we have to combat as well. A number of pieces of research have indicated that even parents are hoping that their children do not become farmers, that they take the next step as the next generation in their careers. And so when I think about the use of technology in agriculture, I really think about it in addressing these particular challenges and not sort of throwing digital tools at farmers and agricultural extension workers. But how can we use technology to become more effective, more productive in agriculture? And so I just wanted to give a few examples of how we've seen this being done both at ERI and in the sector overall. And thinking about how to engage youth using technology and digital tools. So as Lincoln mentioned, incomes and productivity have room for improvement in agriculture. So how can, so the question that I think is, how can we use technology to increase incomes, to increase productivity? And so one of the sort of fundamental sort of binding constraints there is a lack of information. Information asymmetries where farmers and agricultural extension workers don't have access to the information that can increase productivity, that can make, that can increase yields at the end of the day. So for example, there's a new social enterprise in operating in East Africa called Farm Inc. That we recently, that we've known about and also saw at the Big Data platform convention in Nairobi last week. Whereby they're partnering with another CG center on livestock research. And they're using Facebook Messenger, a platform that youth are already engaged in, that they're already accessing for entertainment purposes. And it's a peer to peer learning network. So using machine learning, they're getting a lot of data in. What types of questions are other farmers asking about livestock? And how can they provide information from their peers to other farmers? So you're using a platform that's popular and already exists. And also providing them with actionable information and creating farmer groups and sort of social recognition amongst them. Similarly, other ways to increase and address these productivity at Erie. We have a platform called RaceCrop Manager. And we work very closely with the Department of Agriculture of the Philippines and also state governments in India to provide crop management information, fertilizer and nutrient management information to farmers in these geographies. And this platform has been proven to increase yields and also increase incomes of farmers who have been using them that provide site specific nutrient management recommendations to farmers. And so these are two examples of specific applications of digital technology. Another way is as you think about the agricultural value chain, other ways that digital technology can be used at different points. So post-harvest is another example. When we think about the amount of post-harvest loss that occurs in the rice season, how can we address that using technology? So for example, colleagues at Erie are working on a platform called Easy Harvest that optimizes the access to combine harvesters. So that farmers are able to use and access combine harvesters at the exact moment that they should to avoid post-harvest loss. There's a similar platform in sub-Saharan Africa called Hello Tractor. So both of these platforms are sort of the uber of mechanization and agriculture, but using those digital tools, using tools that you already have in the palm of their hands. And my last point I just want to kind of bring it back to what Lincoln actually has already mentioned in thinking about the interconnectivity of all of these things. How can we get youth engaged is really not just agriculture alone. It's thinking about the ecosystem, the enabling environment for all of this. And so I was excited to hear that you've had President yesterday and I just wanted to quote him because I think this quote sort of summarizes how can we think about a holistic approach to digital agriculture. And he noted that in today's world, when we talk about rural transformation, my best example is that the youngsters need to make sure WhatsApp is working. This is almost non-negotiable. So if we want to make sure that youth are staying in rural areas, we have to make sure that they're connected. This means infrastructure, access to WhatsApp, access to the internet and connectivity. It means access via roads so that they can go to urban centers and make sure that they get back within two to three hours after the weekend ends. So thinking about all of the interplay between these different sectors. And so I'm very excited to hear from our colleague from CalRO as well as in terms of a government perspective and integrating all of these two. Thank you. So that's a nice segue into what I was going to ask Margaret. Kenya and Africa in general has one of the youngest populations of the world. And also some of the highest youth unemployment rates when we are continuing to battle hunger and many parts of the continent and many pockets of the society. So talking about how important the innovation ecosystem and enabling environment is. How do you think the government can support engagement of youth in agriculture? What do you think are the untapped opportunities that could, if I may use the word, entice youth into the agricultural sector? Thank you. First of all, I would just wish to say thank you for inviting me here. It's really indeed a privilege and to be able to talk also on behalf of African governments. My examples might possibly be more on Kenya because that is where I'm more familiar. You've just rightly said that we have a high population of unemployed youth that in the rural areas they provide labor, but they still want to lead a good life. But the youth have spoken through him. They know what they want and it is now up to us to listen. And they have been speaking. One time I was also a youth and somebody was talking for me, trying to plan for me what is good. Now I'm sitting here listening to the youth. Understanding what exactly they want and be part of the team that will formulate policies that will enable the youth to tap their potential. The mistake we were making earlier was we thought youths are for to provide labor. We forgot to remember that they also have inspirations, that they know what they can do. All they want is that safe environment, that enabling environment where to exploit the potential and therefore make it agriculture, an area of interest. He has just said we want to live a good life at the end of the day. So what is this that we need to do? Now with all that background, most of the African presidents have taken it upon themselves to appreciate the importance of the youth because there was a world bank report on the comment that said we have a goldmine in our youths who sit at 60%. And if we tap on that 2030, we will not be talking of hunger anymore. And therefore, what is this we are doing? So the president's first declared, during the Malabo declaration, that we are going to deliberately ensure that 30% of the youths get employed, or rather get involved in agriculture, and therefore get employment through agriculture. Now, after that, there have been other efforts in respective countries to see how best to tap on the youth energy to ensure that they are productive. Because, you know, a productive youth, you are able to also save them from so many social ills that are in the society. And we have, like in Tanzania, the digital platforms have been set up, the e-platforms. And you find we have, like, e-tukuse in Tanzania. We have M-Farm in Kenya, where they are using these platforms to market, to rather connect the young farmers to the markets. Because they know that with the market, then I'm guaranteed of an income and good living. Even after all this is done, they'll need support. The USAID came in very strongly to support, with about 34 million US dollars, to support agriculture run by the youth. And the mega successes are in West Africa, on cashew nut, on cocoa, and other cereals. And I'm just, I was just excited when I was, before I came here, I was watching a video on a young youth in Ghana, not this, with a master's in computer science doing agribusiness on cassava. Because he targeted the industrial starch factory who needed the cassava. And him, he knew he gets money from here and he'll be able to buy food for his family and make good money for himself. And he was proudly there riding on a tractor. And I said, I think this is the right documentary to show to all the youth and say, what we are doing is provide you with the basic knowledge on read and write and understand. And therefore jump in on an opportunity, take the risk, jump on the opportunity and make your life better. Kenya purposely listened to the youths like him, about 400 of them. There was a conference in Kenya in 2015 and the youths talked, not us talking for them. And therefore there was a deliberate effort to develop a strategy, agribusiness strategy for youths that tapped on the policy that was set up in 2006, which was just talking about capacity building and giving them the knowledge in agriculture. But this one is agribusiness per se. And this one has been rolled out because in Kenya, the agriculture is a devolved function. The county governments were also looped in. FRO were members of the team that also developed the strategy, the Minister of Agriculture, USAID department, all contributed to ensure that these youths clearly target what they need in life. In the Ministry of Agriculture, there has been set up a new State Department of Agriculture Research. That's where I sit to look at the policies that will influence the agribusiness sector in my country. And this one goes with the now of the students who are undertaking agricultural research in CalRO and other research organizations. When you make your recommendations, what is the policy brief that you can generate from there, which now will inform the department to look at the policies that will favor the agribusiness sector in the country. I can name so many other countries that also are doing the same and they were all mentioned during the AGRF 2018 in Kigali. And the youths were given an opportunity to say what they feel and the digital world was really the main thing. You know, there is swag when you talk like I'm using drones, developing an app, all this. And if that is what makes you happy and there is an opportunity, why not? And therefore, we have to look at the policies that will allow the use of drones, even in my country like Kenya, because we look at drones as something else that can be used by the wrong people. And therefore, what are these policies that have to be in place? And that is the area where we are. One of the speakers, Dr. Osani, I think, said he listens to music and he internalizes that. And we are saying if we use youths as ambassadors of delivering agriculture messages to their fellow youths through music, they will all dance to the music and listen to the message. And you'll find that some of these youths are also directly involved in agriculture. So they'll be talking about themselves, like the one in Kenya who was keeping rabbits. And he said to Kousa agriculture, that is, take up agriculture because it has made me who I am today. And he was really proud to be among the 400 youths that were involved. So the purpose of us as a government to be here is to listen to the youths, understand what is constraining them getting into agriculture as a business. And somebody said, you use the cool name for agribusiness and it's called agripreneurship. And I think that one will make you even say, yes, I'm doing agripreneurship because the name in itself is swan. And therefore, those are small things that you look at. We might ignore them, but they really make a whole difference in the life of a youth who needs to also come and take advantage of the opportunities that we have in agribusiness. On finances, we are saying youths need that support, but there's nothing for free because it's a business. And therefore, we must have a way of the policy and the policies are already in place. Like, for example, in Kenya, we have the Wezo fund, we have the Youth Enterprise fund. You don't need a collateral, but you'll be better supported if you're in a group, from groups. And we know that when you are in a group, then there is the economies of scale of your produce. Get into value addition. If I want to start a business to sell water, I will pay rent to get the premise where I'll sell my water. What is so difficult if I lease land to do agriculture? Because saying that they have no access to land, I think is the fittest way of looking at it. Because you can deliberately lease, and we have very clear plan policies on leasing you enter into contracts for this period of time. And you should be able to do your business. Because the longer you have a business plan, by this time, I'll break even. So there are so many other opportunities. And in Kenya, we have the big four agenda. There is the company called Trigger Foods that has come in very strongly to help marketing of the farm produce by everybody else. But I think they target more of the youth, whether you are selling the farm produce or you are buying to go and sell elsewhere. So this kind of environment where we are trying to find some who is the marketing and the tap on the market so that we are not exploited by the middlemen. It's an area also that we have focused on. I think they can talk forever, but I know that the message for our youth is the world is now yours. Check us places and make sure there's no hunger in Africa and the world. Thank you. Thank you, Margaret, and we can listen to you forever if you had some more time. Fascinating insights. And I'd love to ask you more questions, but I don't want to monopolize this. But we do have some time for questions. So to broaden that conversation, we created two platforms that will give everyone a chance to be heard, both here in the room and from across the globe. So the first is through Mentimeter. To pose your question, go to menti.com and use that code. Get your cell phones out. Start doing that. Type in your questions. All questions will soon go online and will be able to choose from there. You can do that now. And we also used Facebook and we invited people to share questions a while ago and we received actually quite a lot of good feedback. So we'll choose from these questions that we have collected through the Facebook, but also from some of you sitting here today. Let's see what we got. And we'll pick a few from there. OK, I thought I saw an interesting question there saying, how can young people help a developing country like Nepal? Achieve its zero hunger and nutrition objectives. Lincoln, you have a lot of experience in Myanmar, which is also a developing and a rapidly transforming agricultural economy. Any, would you like to share your views on that? And particularly in developing countries, especially in Myanmar, where we worked, we noticed two very interesting things about the youth there and the role that they could play in helping achieve zero hunger. So when we went around to do our market surveys and visited the farmers houses, we noticed that all the farmers had framed photos of their children because they were obviously really proud of them for being the first in their family to go to university to achieve a proper education. And the second thing was when we were going around in Myanmar, we actually met a lot of, I guess, children of farmers and they were very interested in what we did. But when we asked them, would you like to be a farmer? They said no, because we feel that the effort we put in is not equivalent to what we get back. But then we asked them a follow up, then why are you following us around? And they told us that, well, because we believe your service can help our parents. And that actually offered us a very, like we realized that it became a very exciting opportunity. These youths offer a very exciting opportunity for adoption of technology and services that could help their parents. Because more often than not, they are the bridge between the two worlds. They grew up in farms, so they understand the lifestyle, they understand the day to day struggles of their parents. But at the same time, they've been exposed to technology and modern innovations in the cities and the internet. And more often than not, they are more tech savvy. So they're more open to technological innovations and they can be a platform to actually convince their parents that this is the way forward. And sometimes more often than not, their farmers don't need to be convinced, they just need to understand. And it sometimes is very hard coming from an external point of view to explain it to them. But when it comes from your own children, it makes a difference. And so I feel that's the role that youths in developing nations can actually play. They can be the bridge between, I guess, a more underdeveloped rural agriculture industry and the speed at which technology is evolving in our world today. Thank you. And the other question that I picked up, thought was interesting was, how can you use design thinking as a tool to attract or to engage youth? Any thoughts on that? Anyone on the panel? So design thinking is really based in understanding the experience of the user. So what happens sometimes in international development is a lot of sort of prescription of solutions for everyone, not just the youth. And so design thinking, I think the unique role there is to really understand what is the experience, what is a day in the life of someone that's following Lincoln around in rural Myanmar? Why are they doing that? Asking those questions, seeing how are they interacting in the markets? How are they interacting with their parents? How are they interacting with mobile telephones? And trying to understand all of these different pieces so that the solution is not a great term. But sort of the program or the initiative that we are offering is something that actually makes sense for them. And not just assuming, and Renjita, I know that you are a specialist and an expert in this area. And so I've heard you say this. We can't take youth as sort of a big group, right? It's not the same. It's not just the youth of the world. And so design thinking really lets us hone in on what are the binding constraints? What are the challenges that youth in Kenya face that are going to be different than the youth in Myanmar that are different than the youth in Nepal? Thank you. And the other question that I picked up is about what cloud-based technologies are available that youth can use. You mentioned some of it, Carolyn, in your intervention. But anything else that we could add to that discussion? Cloud-based technologies. I mean, there are a lot of, and we discussed a few of them in terms of the use of technology in general. And sort of one of the other things that's exciting as we think about cloud-based technologies is the use of data and how all of these different platforms that are collecting information about farmers. Again, we can have a whole other session on data privacy and security. But how you're collecting that information that can inform the information and inform the real-time decision-making for farmers, for agricultural extension workers, for government? That's very exciting as we move forward as well. Thank you. And the other thing, I think something that we've been alluding to in our discussion about perceptions and how important they are in getting youth to engage in agriculture. Or even the parents not being very supportive of that. And how do we make those cultural shifts happen, you know, letting sort of helping the parents and the children dispel those perceptions that might not always be right? So that's what I did pick up that question from there, but I'm using different words. Yeah, I think on that one, the most important according to what I've observed is the role models. The role models and the ambassadors that will be out there talking to our youths, talking to our parents, talking to our communities. And they could use several fora. I mentioned music. I mentioned attending some of the meetings. Pappos, that. Then we also have exhibitions and agro-techs. In Kenya, we have ASK shows. All these platforms provide the youths, the parents, the children to understand because we invite these people to showcase what's happening. And they're so proud of what they're saying. So that ambassador will say, OK, if my son is an engineer, an electrical engineer and is able to undertake agriculture, I see making it. My son, my own son, is also an engineer and they're struggling to look for a job that is not there and they're doing so badly. You can now change the conversation and discuss and say, look, if he can make it, you can also make it. Thank you. Oh, well, we could go on and on. I don't want to eat into everybody's lunchtime. So one last question again that I picked from there and I love, I would have asked that same question. We keep talking about youth as if it's one homogeneous group. All these decades or centuries, every time we talked about farmers, who comes to your mind? The man with the plow. And these days, unfortunately, I have a feeling we are slipping into something like that for youth. Youth, who comes into your mind? A young man trying to do something in agriculture. Let's not forget young men and young women face very different challenges, very different opportunities. So let's think of young women for a little bit and then say, what kind of policies, what are the special constraints that they might be facing? How do we address that issue? In fact, the gender segregated data is really important for us to understand what the women or the young ladies, the youths, even the people living with disabilities, so that we target specifically. So that, for example, our women are supposed to get married and leave the home to go where the husband comes from. And therefore, you are not really given the same playing field at home like your brother. And therefore, if we now target the young women in agriculture, then we now have to consider some of those. They'll get married, they'll have children, they'll have careers, and they also want to look beautiful at the same time. And therefore, what are these specifics that we want to look at? That these are the disabilities, what are we targeting them to do? So that we propose to have policies that will protect them, that will safeguard them in whatever they are doing. And the same to the young men, or boys, as they grow, there is that delicate transition where they need to make these decisions. And therefore, a lot is expected from them. Now, how can we harness that extra energy at that point in time just to ensure that they focus, and even them, they all now look at it like, if I'm not a computer engineer, if I have not developed an app, then I'm a lesser person. Because the ego for our young men for sure is real, and there is that competition among peers that I should be better than you. Not necessarily to progress yourself, but just to be better than the other person. So looking at all this, then we have to look at what avenues do we have to bring them to a level to buffer them, so that they're able to think through the decisions they make. And I still insist mentors come in handy. Let them look up to the role models out there, and you tell them, I went through this, I made it, so you can too. Thank you very much. Extremely rich discussion, and as I said, we could go on and on, but I guess we need to conclude it. But before concluding, I mean, there was a lot to take away from there. Let me say the two or three big things that kind of stuck with me. I think for me, the first and the foremost was listen to the young people, let them have an opportunity to have their voice out there. We keep making a lot of assumptions and we seem to decide or we seem to think we know what's good for them or what they want. Let's not do that. Let's talk to them. Let's listen to them and take that into consideration while we develop our strategies, programs, investments and policies. And the second one, perceptions are really important. We keep talking about, you know, we keep lamenting how youth are not coming into agriculture at the rate we might like them to. Perceptions play a huge role and we discount the importance of that, not just of the young people, but of the communities, the families, the societies. So how do we influence that? We've heard of a few things that could help do that, you know, role models and mentorship and music and dance as well. So let's see how we can use those creatively to make that happen. And no discounting the importance of having an effective innovation ecosystem or the enabling environment. We talked about investments. We talked about the nature of education, the kind of education that's needed, formal and informal. So we need to get that right. And something I picked up again from Margaret is, yeah, we keep harping on the constraints and challenges that we have. Often the first thing we go to is, land rights, land rights, land rights are important, but there might be ways to get around those. Let's get a bit more creative about those, right? With that, thank you so much to our panelists for participating in this panel, for sharing your ideas, experiences and perspectives. Liberally, thank you very much. We gained a lot from this. I hope everybody picked up some good ideas and insights from here. Let's give our panel a big hand for being here and doing this for us.