For years, conversations about young people and agriculture have often started with the same question: How do we get young people interested in farming? But what if we are asking the wrong question? At the Kenya Youth in Agrifood Systems Summit (KYASS) 2026, GROOTS Kenya chose to approach it differently.
Instead of asking how to get young people into agriculture, the session “When Young People Organise, Systems Move” asked us to look at what young people are already doing and what becomes possible when they have the knowledge, networks, finance and collective power to act.
Under the summit theme, Youth Leading Resilient and Sustainable Agrifood Systems, the session put five young women from Laikipia, Kitui, Murang’a and Nairobi at the center of the conversation. Their stories were different. Their contexts were different. But together, they told one compelling story:
Young people are not waiting to become the future of agriculture. They are already shaping its present. They are farming, saving, building enterprises, managing resources more sustainably, experimenting with new approaches and stepping into leadership. The question is whether the systems around them are moving fast enough to support them.
The session deliberately moved away from the traditional panel format. Rather than beginning with policy questions and technical language, it began with something more powerful: the stories of the young women themselves. Where did their journeys begin?
What brought them into farming? How did they find organizing? And what changed when they stopped trying to do it alone? Their answers revealed something that is easy to miss in high-level conversations about youth and agriculture: behind every “young farmer” is a journey. There is often a community, a group, a mentor, a challenge, a small opportunity and sometimes, a moment when someone simply says, come, let us do this together.
For Julia Wachira from Laikipia County, leadership was never the plan. She was not a farmer either, she was a young businessperson looking for an opportunity when she began researching herbs and discovered their potential in Laikipia and she decided to try
Her entry into leadership came unexpectedly, at a community baraza (Community Meeting), where elders were forming groups around agricultural value chains. When it came time to choose a leader, they turned to the young sitting among them: "This one who is here, this youth, let her come and lead us elders." Five years later, Julia is still leading the group and has since helped establish the now formally registered Laikipia Agroecology Farmers Movement
Julia’s story challenges the assumption that leadership must always come with age or years of experience. It also shows what can happen when generations recognize what they can learn from one another. The result is not a replacement for older generations. It is a partnership between experience and new ideas, moving in both directions.
This is the kind of intergenerational collaboration that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) identifies as central to the long-term resilience of agrifood systems. FAO argues that generational renewal requires investment in institutions, policies, partnerships, participation mechanisms and knowledge systems that enable young people to contribute meaningfully to agrifood systems.
If Julia’s story challenges assumptions about who can lead, Rachel Ndanu Mvui’s challenges assumptions about who can farm and what farming can look like. A nursery schoolteacher from Mwingi Central in Kitui County, Rachel was introduced to Agroecology Kenya through community mapping. She went on to practice kitchen gardening, tree nursery planting and seed saving alongside her teaching work.
For her, agriculture did not have to mean abandoning an existing livelihood. It became another way to strengthen it. "From being an ECDE teacher, I can put money in my pocket and I can say agroecology works and helps a lot," she said.
For Jane Wanjiru from Murang’a County, the shift was more personal. As a young mother, she depended on her husband for everyday needs. She joined an agroecology group, gained financial literacy training and savings through table banking and was elected chairperson. With the capital that followed, she invested in a tree nursery of Hass avocado and coffee seedlings and took up poultry and now creates work for other young people too.
Jane's and Rachel's stories point to an important distinction for policymakers, development partners and investors: the question is not simply how to get young people into farming. It is how to create conditions in which agriculture can become a viable livelihood, enterprise and pathway to leadership.
Perhaps the most striking perspective came from Rosemary Mwangi of Korogocho in Nairobi County proof that transforming agri food systems isn't limited to rural farms. Facing the "ghetto" label she was determined to shed, Rosemary's group uses kitchen gardens, vertical farming and hydroponics, turning Korogocho Market's spoiled produce into briquettes, artificial firewood and avocado-oil skincare products. Demand for the briquettes has already outpaced supply. "If we join hands across counties, we can do great work," she said.
What looks like waste becomes an enterprise and an informal settlement became a site of innovation.
For Veronica Ekai, a young Agroecology Kenya champion from Laikipia North and member of the Baraka United Youth Group, finance became the bridge between learning and action.
Coming from a pastoralist community, Veronica had never imagined farming as an option for herself. “We only knew livestock.”
But things began to change. Her 14-member youth group saved KSh 180,000 and through GROOTS SACCO, Veronica accessed an agroecology loan. She used the financing to purchase mesh wire, water tanks, seedlings and tools. What began as a way to grow food for her own household; kale, onions, coriander and spinach has grown into something she can also sell.
Her story brings the resource question into sharp focus. Knowledge matters, but it needs a pathway to action and for many young people, particularly young women, that pathway is blocked by limited access to land, finance, technology, information and markets. An idea cannot become a livelihood on ambition alone.
Across all five stories, one thread kept returning: collective organizing. Julia built a movement. For Jane, organizing created a platform for leadership, savings and investment. Rosemary's group turned an environmental challenge into an enterprise. Veronica's group saved and invested together, creating a pathway to finance. And Rachel's experience shows how knowledge can move through organized community spaces and become practical action.
This is why, for GROOTS Kenya, grassroots organizing and leadership are not simply a way of delivering program. Organizing is the strategy itself. When people organize, they can share knowledge, pool resources, build enterprises and amplify their voices in ways that are much harder to achieve alone. It changes what people can imagine and what they can negotiate for moving young people from being viewed as participants or beneficiaries to being recognized as actors, innovators and leaders already influencing the systems around them.
The stories shared at KYASS are part of a much larger conversation. 2026 is the International Year of the Woman Farmer, while continental and global conversations continue to emphasize the importance of meaningful youth and women's participation in agrifood systems.
But commitments and strategies ultimately matter because of what they change on the ground. And on the ground, transformation already has a face. It looks like a herb enterprise in Laikipia. A kitchen garden in Kitui. A tree nursery in Murang'a. A waste-to-resource enterprise in Korogocho. A young woman in Laikipia North using finance to turn a small plot into a source of food and income.
These stories show us something policy conversations can sometimes overlook: transformation is already happening at the grassroots.
The question facing Kenya is no longer whether young people belong in agrifood systems. They do. The question now is whether the systems around them will provide what they need to lead: meaningful access to land and finance, technology and markets, information and supportive policies and a genuine voice in decisions that affect their livelihoods.
It also means recognizing that young people do not have to work alone. Older generations carry knowledge built over years of farming and community practice. Young people bring new ideas, technologies, energy and new ways of organizing. When those strengths meet, transformation becomes possible.
So perhaps the challenge before policymakers, funders, private-sector actors and development partners is not to invent another solution for young people. It is to listen to what young people are already building and invest in what is already working.
Because Kenya's agrifood future is not waiting somewhere ahead. It is already being built.
In groups. In farms. In classrooms. In informal settlements. In community movements. In the hands of young women who are organizing, experimenting, saving, farming, leading and creating.
And when young people organize, they do more than participate in systems. They move them.
