Predictive Factors Affecting Indian Rural Farm Youth's Decisions to Stay in or Leave Agriculture Sector

Agriculture has been facing an increasing problem, worldwide, on account of farmers quitting agriculture; and India is no exception to it. In view of this, a study was undertaken to find out the factors predicting future decision(s) of rural farm youth, hailing from Eastern States of India, regarding ‘Whether or not to remain engaged in the agriculture sector’. The data were collected through personal interview with 120 rural farm youth. The results showed that 41.67 per cent of the rural farm youth would leave farming in the future. Binomial Logit Model indicated that the factors like land-holding, entry to farming, attitude towards dairying and crop farming were significant, as far as decision on ‘quitting the farming in the near future’ was concerned. Apart from this, ensuring the ‘Food Security for the Family’ was found to be the main reason for choosing farming as an occupation, as reported by the rural youth engaged in farming. On the other hand, ‘To bring stability in life’ happened to be the prime reason cited by the rural youth that had moved into farming after having tried other occupation(s). Based on the quantitative results, coupled with qualitative information, two distinctive paradigms were developed to reflect ‘How youth becomes a Farmer?’ and ‘How and Why the youth quits Farming?’, with a view to enrich our knowledge on this subject via empirical evidences as obtained from the grassroots level, especially from the Eastern Part of India.