Factors Influencing the Youths’ Interest in Agricultural Entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka

Aversion to working in agriculture by the youth, is prima facie evident in the country. The declining interest of the youngsters to work in the agriculture makes a great impact on the future sustainability of this sector. Given this context, the main objective of this research is to explore non–plantation agriculture sector to examine the youth aspirations towards agricultural employment choice in Sri Lanka. Data were collected from a multi stage cluster sample of 400 youth and their parents using a self-administered questionnaire. Descriptive statistics revealed that insufficient income, insufficient lands, limited opportunities, low social acceptance are the driving force of the farmers’ reluctance on encouraging their children towards farming. Estimated binary logistic model found that the youth aspirations towards the agricultural entrepreneurship was strongly influenced positively by attitude, acceptance, parental satisfaction on agricultural income, parental income, agro machine ownership, land ownership, expected government support and credit facilities while parental education showed a negative effect. Effective awareness raising campaigns to improve parents and society’s attitudes, well-designed training and knowledge enhancing programs to detail the opportunities which secure the trust, address the issues faced by the sector in terms of advancing the technology; marketing and seeking international opportunities, forming of effective young farmers’ organizations and empowering them to raise necessary bargaining power, providing necessary facilities such as water conservation/harvesting and irrigation systems, local seed banks and so on are suggestions made by the study. Keywords: Youth aspirations; Employment choice; Agriculture; Farmers’ willingness; Sri Lanka DOI: 10.7176/DCS/9-12-05 Publication date: December 31st 201