I want to be a farmer, when I grow down

My childhood memorires tell me that one of the most popular end of year presentations during my primary schools days (I never made it to nursery school as my dad thought it was a waste of time) was the  'I am a something...' speech. If my memory serves me right, it always went like this: pupils walk unto the stage successively and bow. The crowd responds with claps and each pupil belches his or her lines that were always the same except for the profession part:

         ' I am a lawyer. I defend people in court..... Am I not not important?' and the crowd would respond 'Yes you are' and clap as the kid bows out. Another kid would come in and extoll the virtues of another profession and this spectacle would go on until all the most prestigious professions the school hierarchy could think of had been exhausted. In  retrospect and with the current talk of the superimportance of farming, and by extension farmers, I know discover in this parade of professionals there was one outsider. At that time it was hard for our juvenile minds to know this since we were at the height of the imitation and cramming phase of our learning. Understanding, interrogation and circumspection were delights for our latter days. So I have now discovered that the outsider, the odd number in this series was the good FARMER who was important because he (it was always paradoxically a he farmer not a her farmess) grew the food our bodies needed.            

            After a mental parade of some of the most celebrated professions during these end of year celebrations, I can now safely say the farmer was the outsider. In the company of engineers, lawyers, doctors, scientist, teachers, the farmer was the odd element not because he wasn't important but because his importance was only declared and affirmed once a year and that was it.  When we his strongest proponents pored over books or swallowed the gospel according to the teacher, we either dreamnt of becoming a lawyer, engineer or doctor, never the farmer although some of our school fees and needs were only paid for after maize and beans were harvested, shelled and thrashed by our farmer parents. So what's the big deal?

                  At a time when African governments have suddenly discovered the importance of agriculture and are trying to lure their youths into considering agriculture( or farmership), it is important to ask how this is going to be done. How is farming going to free us from the clutches of unemployment, poverty and dependency? Is it going to be through the distribution of cutlasses and watering cans during elections? Is it going to be the continuation of the generalist and manual approach to farming or is it going to be through specialisation and high-tech? Believe it or not, although climate change is only going to further the relevance of agriculture and farmers, it isn't going to leave much room for an outdated definition of agriculture and farmers. Those with such definitions will be those who want to be farmers when they grow down, not up.
               Sure there is no shame (and not there is pride, I hope you see the nuance) in being a farmer but if our politrickcians want youths to seriously consider farming, no matter how hi-tech-ified it is, then the discourse must change right from nursery school. Teachers need to start telling those young ones that even after learning BIG BOOK they can still turn to the mother earth for socio-economic salvation. And furthermore farming should be made to look glamorous. Just saying.