Indian Agriculture vis-a-vis Youth: Evidence from Tamil Nadu

The study attempted to analyze the factors determining students' willingness to make agriculture a career. Further, an effort was made to study the constraints in establishing their farm immediately after graduation. About 397 agricultural students doing UG, PG, and Ph.D. degrees in Tamil Nadu were randomly surveyed in September 2020. The results revealed that about 25 per cent of the students joined the course because of better job opportunities, and 19 per cent learned about farming. Nearly 48 per cent of the students wish to be in a public sector job, and only 11 per cent choose to make agriculture their career. Having own farmland, residence, parent's primary occupation, age, gender, types of crop grown, and mother's occupation had a significant positive effect on students' willingness to become farmers, whereas degree enrolled and total farmland had negatively affected the students' willingness. Lack of remunerative price, unavailable credit at low interest, and poor social recognition were the major constraints for not involving agriculture early. Consequently, more than half of the respondents planned to do farming after 10 years of their graduation. Public policies could reduce this period if agricultural graduates were among the young people engaged in farming.