“We have the latitude to dream what that new world could look like”

Genna Tesdall is the Director of the network Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD). Before joining YPARD, she was a Fulbright Researcher at Humboldt University of Berlin/Germany, and was the former president of the International Association of Agriculture and Related Sciences Students (IAAS).

Ms Tesdall, are young people getting the attention they need in politics?
Genna Tesdall: Ten years ago, when I first started advocating for youth issues, the battle was to get youth beyond the role of “being seen and not heard”. We’ve made huge progress in that area; now youth are consistently consulted, even if often in a tokenistic manner. We are able to bring forward platforms on human rights, agroecology and a just transition. What’s harder is to press back on the politicians when they are not honouring their commitments to these platforms; since the engagement is tokenistic, it’s a great way not to get invited the next time. So our position in advocacy is not secure.

Neither are we naive as youth activists – corporate interests are playing a huge role. Corporations are very able to fund everything that they want to do for their activities, and these usually don’t align with a human rights and agroecology-centred approach. So that's a huge challenge, because who gets listened to is also a factor when it comes to who can fund more people to go and talk to the politicians.

You are also campaigning for a general transformation in agriculture. What would have to change?
Genna Tesdall: We believe that there should be people's leadership in the agricultural system. What does that mean? For one thing, it means an agroecology and human rights-based approach. In practice, we see increasing farm sizes and a growing need to invest more capital to be able to even start farming or be a farmer. It should be possible for a young person to enter agriculture, to be able to access a plot of land and start farming, even if they're not inheriting land from their father or grandfather. What's holding so many young people back is that we don’t have access to productive assets. Young people should be able to take leadership positions and really have a leading role in this transformation. Of course, we advocate for an agroecology approach as well. We really believe that helps because it's centred a lot around people's leadership and community leadership. In many cases, our current agricultural system doesn't respect most people, it doesn't respect most living beings.

Are young people more open to the transformation you are advocating?
Genna Tesdall: You see that young people tend to be on that curve of early adopters. Young people have generally less vested interest in the system. We do not already own land, we don't already have a retirement plan, we do not already own houses or businesses. And so we also have the latitude to dream what that new world could look like and really make it feel like our own as well. And everyone loves their own idea – including youth! So that's a great way to make change happen in our view. Of course, we don't want to be adversarial against past generations. I think that would maybe distinguish some of our activities from other activities, because we really do believe we have a lot to learn from each other, and we want to work in cooperation. But while acknowledging that we're in a vulnerable position, we're going to speak up. We're going to say how we want things to happen. And sometimes that's going to be different than how things have been done in the past.

Nevertheless, in many countries, it is difficult to get young people to take an interest in agriculture …
Genna Tesdall: Currently, we do not have a strong eye on what is going to happen to our food supply, to food processing, to food distribution, if we are not allowing people to have good livelihoods in these areas. We know food systems have some of the most dangerous and indecent working conditions, like exposure to dangerous machinery, toxic pesticides, low wages and precarious wages. Then you wonder why people aren't in these professions. These poor conditions are not a working environment I would wish for my child, for example. So we have to take that on, or we're going to have a really big challenge with food production. And that may seem really far off, but it's not that far off.

So what constitutes a fair and good food system in your eyes?
Genna Tesdall: In our eyes, a fair and good food system is one that respects human dignity, the dignity of living beings – it respects the human rights approach but also provides good, decent livelihoods for people where they feel that they can also be a little bit creative with what they are doing, that they can put their talent to work. Think about the things that make you feel like you have a worthwhile profession or worthwhile life. This is what we want to be able to imagine for young people in the food system. We imagine that then going to smaller structures, so that you can really have a community-level organisation.

What do you think your network’s greatest strength is?
Genna Tesdall: YPARD was founded around 20 years ago to connect young people all around the world in agriculture. It can feel very lonely when you're in the food and agricultural sector. As a young person, first, trying to make a career and connecting with your peers can be really empowering because you can ask those silly questions or ponder those difficult aspects of being in this sector. And then also have the courage to just try something out together. And I think that's the real beauty. You make your own mistakes, you have your own success, and then, hopefully, you learn from your mistakes, and then you continue more on the path that gave you success.

And what are you trying out at the moment? 
Genna Tesdall: We're working a lot with what we're calling community solutions, fellowships and internships. A group of young people getting together and saying, hey, there's a problem in my community, and I want to solve it. And so with this solution, they apply to the project. It can either be in its idea stage, or it can already be in the process of implementation. And then they get a fellowship of about ten months and they're coached. They are offered learning modules that are related to their project, and of course are then connected to others in the sector, both in their country and around the world, so that they can help them get that project off the ground. So we're building their professional skills, but also their networks and that project at the same time. We're in about the third iteration of this type of model. And, of course, we're learning a lot from doing this model, but we see that there's so much demand. When we opened up our last call for applications, we had six slots, and in about three days, we got 500 applications. So this is a good sign for us that we should continue doing things in this direction and keep tinkering on the concept.

What brought you into agriculture?
Genna Tesdall: My grandparents were farmers in rural Iowa. When I was around ten years old, my grandparents passed away and the farm was sold off. I think that had I been a little older, I would have been the one to say “please let me farm it”. But that was not how things worked out. Even so, I had always been really interested in farming and agriculture, and had this connection. That is what brought me to it. At the same time, I grew up in a university town. I had a lot of friends who came from international backgrounds. That led me to this this career in development cooperation.

Where do you see YPARD in ten years’ time?
Genna Tesdall: Personally, I would love to see being able to start more learning centres in communities to help make this vision of localisation happen more strongly. Our new strategy says that we want to work more on localisation at the country level, at the local level. What exactly does that work look like? I can imagine having great learning centres for people where people can come have an experience, learn more about different agricultural techniques and connect. We have these models all around the world, but there's still so much need for them. They sound like such a simple idea, but there are still so many areas that don't have them. Sometimes we don't have to invent something crazy and new, we just have to do something well.

This is an abridged and edited version of an interview first published at www.foodfortransformation.org. Genna Tesdall was interviewed by Jan Rübler.

Further reading:

Rural 21 Dossier on "Youth"