Youre Doing it Wrong Dad

[Music]

an

old lanky farmer stood up next to me to

make his point

singling out two teenage boys in the

back of a rural west african schoolhouse

they did it the youth

the force and passion expressed by the

old farmer created tension

in what had been a seemingly pleasant

conversation

but what exactly had the youth

done if you’re like most people you tend

to think of youth as either

impressionable sponges in need of our

love knowledge and care

or as obnoxious little tears who ought

to be seen and never heard

and maybe if you’re a parent you go back

and forth between the two

but what if there were a third way to

view youth what if there were a way to

empower youth

to transform adults and what if that new

perspective of youth

could solve some of the world’s most

pressing challenges

i’m an agriculturalist i grew up on a

cattle ranch in west texas

as a product of school-based

agricultural education even serving as

national president

of the future farmers of america i never

had a desire to be in education or

youth development i wanted to transform

agriculture

particularly in sub-saharan africa a

region i had grown to appreciate

after leading several research

expeditions on agriculture and food

security

but in order to pursue this i would be

taking down a path that reshaped the way

i viewed youth

by connecting a 100 year old idea in

agricultural education

to a modern theory of behavioral

economics by a nobel prize-winning

economist

and it would all somehow collide in that

rural

west african schoolhouse which i’ll come

back to in just a moment

the story begins when america was little

more than a developing country of

struggling farmers

just over 100 years ago imagine the

scene

droves of angry farmers with pitchforks

arriving on campuses of land-grant

colleges

accusing the government of spending

their tax dollars to turn

their sons into scientists rather than

better farmers

one man rufus stimpson president of what

is today the university of connecticut

heard the legitimate concern behind the

farmer’s anger

as a pragmatist who had studied

philosophy under william james at

harvard

he believed that agricultural research

developed at the university

ought to directly benefit farmers he had

an idea

so in 1908 he resigned as college

president

to become a high school agriculture

teacher to test out his new idea

what he called a home project to diffuse

agricultural innovations

into rural communities through youth

while simultaneously giving them an

opportunity

to learn by doing the idea was

straightforward

the college trains the teacher in

science-based agricultural practices

the teacher trains the student through a

public school

and the student demonstrates the

improved methods through a home

project on their family farm when we

think of knowledge transfer

we tend to think of adults teaching

youth but this is only really true

of established knowledge and tradition

such as mathematics or even religion

it’s not necessarily true of new ideas

or technologies

such as a social media platform a social

justice cause or

even a new agricultural crop just think

of all the new technologies your own

kids have shared with you

sharing new ideas however doesn’t always

lead to behavioral shift

or adoption of new technology this is

where something in

stimson’s methodology was different his

and other youth-centered agricultural

programs

were leading to widespread adoption of

better agricultural practices

and technologies across the united

states

youth seemed to be the magic ingredient

but why

the field of behavioral economics as

developed by daniel kahneman and amos

taversky

may shed some light on this question and

present

us with an opportunity to shift the way

we think of the role of youth in the

economy

to better illustrate this let’s have

some virtual audience participation

of the following which do you choose

take 45 cents for sure

or flip a coin and win a dollar on heads

and nothing on tails

capture that answer in your mind

second problem which you choose take

450 000 for sure or flip a coin

and win a million dollars on heads and

nothing on tails

now capture that answer in your mind

if you’re like most people you chose the

gamble of the coin flip in problem one

but chose the sure thing of the 450 000

in the second problem why the switch up

both problems share the exact same odds

in behavioral economics the answer is

reference point

reference point is simply the status quo

or in this particular case

your current state of wealth few people

know their state of wealth within a few

thousand dollars

and no one knows it within 45 cents

because a sure thing is stated as one

option

your mind adds that sure thing to your

state of wealth

and then calculates the psychological

pain it would go through

if you chose the gamble lost the gamble

and therefore lost a sure thing while

losing 45 cents may cause you no pain

losing 450 thousand dollars probably

would

that fear of loss drives you away from

the gamble in the second problem

to choose the sure thing of the 450 000

would a billionaire and a homeless

person choose the same responses to both

questions

of course not they have different

reference points

now consider this problem a new hybrid

corn seed has been introduced to a rural

community in sub-saharan africa

scientists have tested the new corn at a

research center and determined it can

double the yields of the traditional

variety

without the use of additional inputs or

change to farming practices

no community member has seen the

demonstrations and the two seeds

look identical when compared visually

let’s call the hybrid seed

a gamble and the traditional seed a sure

thing

based on reference point who is more

likely to adopt the hybrid seed

a 13 year old taking an agriculture

class in junior high school

or her father a subsistence farmer

feeding eight children at home

not only is the young person more likely

to adopt the hybrid seed

she is also the best person in that

community to share the new innovation

with adult farmers

in such a way that will lead to its

adoption

but most interventions to diffuse

agricultural innovations

focus their attention on lead farmers

rather than youth

a lead farmer tends to be more educated

and slightly better off

resulting in a reference point that

allows them to be early adopters

imagine this represents the reference

point of an average

smallholder farmer in a rural community

from their perspective

a lead farmer is already above them

producing higher yields

so when a non-profit government or

private business conducts an

agricultural intervention

with lead farmers their high yields

become even

higher but from the perspective of the

smallholder farmer

nothing really changes the status quo

stays the same

the rich keep getting richer however

from that same reference point of the

smallholder farmer

youth are perceived to be beneath them

of course someone who’s been farming for

20 years can out produce someone who’s

never

farmed before in their life so when that

same agricultural intervention

is conducted with youth

the youth outproduced the smallholder

farmer

causing the reference point to shift

the sure thing of the traditional seed

which was once perceived as a gain

is now perceived as a loss when framed

against

the youth’s performance with the gamble

of the hybrid seed

as a result most adults will choose the

hybrid seed

next time a seed that could reduce

hunger

protect the environment and lift

families out of poverty

since 2013 my organization has built

capacity for school-based agricultural

education programs

in ghana and liberia working with

organizations such as

4-h in community after community

we are meeting farmers who have improved

their yields by 50

to 150 percent and in some cases with

the right technologies

as much as 400 percent based on what

they’ve learned from

teenagers to bring greater rigor of

evidence on this

we are partnering with economists from

northwestern university

to conduct a randomized controlled trial

on the efficacy of school-based

agricultural education in liberia

this will be the first research of its

kind to actually measure the economic

impact

youth can have by framing innovations to

adults

evidence should be published by 2023

so what exactly did happen with those

youth

in that west african schoolhouse i

referred to earlier well

after that old lanky farmer startled me

with his accusation

he continued the youth taught us

previously we were slashing and burning

but the youth taught us the conservation

methods and how to use the better seed

we saw how well the school farm was

doing

so we listened farmers then went around

the room

and began telling me everything they had

learned from the school’s youth

responsible fertilizer application seed

spacing

the importance of quality seed

composting terracing

every farmer in the room had more than

doubled their yields

based on lessons learned from junior

high students

but i was still curious who specifically

taught you

i asked well ishmael taught me said one

farmer

so i asked ishmael an 18 year old

student what had happened

he said he was walking through the

village one day and overheard a group of

farmers complain

about their exceptionally low yields

he walked up to the older farmers and

confidently said

i can help you get higher yields

they hesitated at his age he told me but

accepted everything he taught

because they had seen the increased

production he had achieved

on the school farm one farmer

invited ishmael to teach him how to

avoid soil erosion

plant in rose and properly apply

fertilizer on his own farm

a two-hour lesson from a junior high

student

transformed that man’s life as the

farmer later told me

by seeing the youth excited about

agriculture and doing well

not only have i produced more food to

feed my family

it has also made me proud to be a farmer

youth play a critical and distinctive

role in the political economy of our

world

a role that only they can play because

they possess

a unique reference point and when they

are empowered with the appropriate

knowledge and technologies

they can reshape the world back to the

rest of us

to nudge us from our reference points

to make better choices to solve some of

the world’s most

challenging problems if we want a better

future

faster we must harness the unique role

of youth

but we don’t need to wait for youth to

grow up to change the world

we can empower them to change us

and the world today

you