Attitude of rural youth towards agriculture as a means of livelihood

The importance of agriculture to the socio-economic development of the country cannot be overemphasized. Agriculture sector is potentially the largest employment providing sector in the country. Despite this, unemployment is high among rural youth, who prefer to migrate to urban areas to take up low paying jobs. The present study was carried out mainly to find out the characteristics of rural youth and their attitude towards agriculture as a means of livelihood. The study was conducted in four villages in Udham Singh Nagar district in Uttarakhand. Data was collected from 115 youth using pretested interview schedule. It was found that maximum number of respondents (31.30 %) had education up to higher secondary level, majority were students (46.96 %) and had medium level of mass media exposure (72.17 %) and change proneness (58.30 %). The study indicates that majority (85.20 %) of the respondents had neutral attitude towards agriculture followed by 13.90 percent of the respondents who had negative attitude towards agriculture and only 0.90 % respondents had positive attitude towards agriculture. The study indicates that the findings will help extension policy makers to frame appropriate training programmes for educating youth regarding opportunities in agriculture and allied sectors