What Makes Agriculture Relevant to Young People? Lessons from Coffee Camp 2026

Young people are often described as the future of agriculture. But that raises a more difficult question: what kind of agricultural sector are we asking them to inherit?

In Honduras, that question is particularly relevant for coffee. Only 8% of registered coffee farmers are between 18 and 30 years old. Young rural people also face barriers to entering and progressing within the sector: access to land, financing, technical assistance and farmer organizations remains limited, while many consider migration in search of better opportunities.

Yet there is another side to the story. According to the same youth data, 86% believe coffee farming can represent a business opportunity and a pathway for their future.

That suggests the challenge is not simply how to convince young people to remain in agriculture.

A better question may be: how can agriculture offer enough opportunity, choice and agency for young people to actively choose a future within it?

This is one of the questions Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS) is addressing through Coffee Camp. Organized by HRNS together with partners from the coffee sector, civil society, business and rural development, Coffee Camp combines experiential learning, entrepreneurship, networking and direct exposure to different opportunities across the coffee value chain.

Its seventh edition, Coffee Camp 2026 in Honduras, brought together 101 young people from Copán, Ocotepeque, La Paz, Lempira, Comayagua and Intibucá. Sixty-three percent of participants were young women.

What happened during those four days offers some useful lessons for anyone asking how to engage young people more meaningfully in agriculture.

Agriculture is often presented to rural youth primarily through production: improving yields, managing a farm or eventually taking over the family business.

Those pathways matter. But they represent only one part of a much larger opportunity landscape.

At Coffee Camp 2026, young people explored regenerative agriculture, climate solutions, income diversification, circular economy approaches, processing methods, agricultural entrepreneurship, coffee quality, cupping, roasting and barismo. They also visited farms, a technology nursery and coffee businesses, encountering people working across different parts of the sector.

One result is particularly interesting: participants’ favorite learning stations were cupping, roasting and barismo — areas strongly connected to quality, transformation and value addition.

Heidy Acevedo’s experience helps explain why showing this broader picture matters. During Coffee Camp, she encountered not only production, but also innovative products, brewing methods, entrepreneurship and different ways young people can participate in the value chain — as producers, innovators, service providers, value creators or business owners.

Her experience points to a broader lesson: engaging young people in agriculture means showing them more than one way in.

Some may want to farm. Others may be interested in technology, processing, sustainability, marketing, hospitality or entrepreneurship. Expanding the range of visible opportunities makes it more likely that young people with different skills and ambitions can imagine a place for themselves.

Seeing possibilities is important. Experiencing them can be even more powerful.

HRNS designed Coffee Camp around an experiential “learning by doing” approach, combining technical knowledge and soft skills with direct interaction with farmers, entrepreneurs, companies, producer organizations and technical experts.

For Nubia Rivera, this became tangible outside the classroom.

Her Coffee Camp experience took her from nurseries and young coffee plants to technologies supporting sustainable production, and then to coffee businesses in Santa Rosa de Copán. At ESTUCAFÉ and Café Las Velas, she saw how value continues to be created beyond the farm through quality, preparation, branding and entrepreneurship.

That distinction matters.

Technical training can provide knowledge. But young people are also asking themselves practical questions: Could I do this? Is this a realistic livelihood? Is there someone like me already doing it?

Meeting entrepreneurs, visiting businesses and experiencing technologies firsthand can transform an abstract idea into something imaginable.

Another result from Coffee Camp deserves just as much attention as the technical learning: 91% of participants said they felt heard and valued.

Meaningful youth engagement is not simply the transfer of information from experts to a younger generation.

Young people need opportunities to ask questions, exchange ideas, experiment, meet peers and contribute their own perspectives. They also need environments where their ambitions are treated seriously.

That is why the Coffee Camp model deliberately combines community, networks, entrepreneurship, learning and recreation.

Recreation, culture and social connection can easily be treated as secondary when designing agricultural development programs. For young people, however, belonging and enjoyment can be important parts of participation.

A space where people learn together, build friendships and encounter others who share similar challenges can help create something technical training alone cannot: a sense of possibility and belonging.

The way participants said they wanted to use their new knowledge is revealing.

66% said it could help them start a business.
56% wanted to improve production on their farm.
51% saw it helping them become leaders in their communities.

Those answers do not point toward one definition of a successful agricultural future — and that is precisely the point.

Meaningful youth engagement should not prescribe a single pathway. It should help young people develop the skills, connections and confidence to make informed choices about their own futures.

Frelin Romero’s journey illustrates how that agency can develop over time.

Frelin first attended Coffee Camp in 2022. He explored coffee production, quality, cupping, technology and challenges such as climate change. Afterwards, the knowledge did not remain with him alone: he shared what he had learned with farms, farming families and members of his cooperative.

Four years later, he returned to Coffee Camp with a different perspective. This time, his experience allowed him to help guide young people attending for the first time and encourage them to look at the opportunities within their own farms, cooperatives and communities.

Frelin’s story shows why youth engagement cannot end when an event finishes.

When young people apply knowledge, share it and eventually become people who encourage others, an initial learning opportunity can begin to influence families, cooperatives and communities as well.

Agriculture needs young people. But that fact alone will not create generational renewal.

Young people also need reasons to choose agriculture: relevant skills, different career pathways, access to networks, practical experiences, room for entrepreneurship and opportunities to contribute their own ideas.

For HRNS, this is why Coffee Camp is not designed as an isolated four-day intervention. It is part of a broader process of youth development that can continue through leadership and soft-skills development, vocational learning and engagement with opportunities across and beyond the coffee value chain.

The approach also recognizes that one organization cannot create these opportunities alone.

Coffee Camp functions as a multi-stakeholder platform, connecting young people with private-sector companies, farmer organizations, cooperatives, entrepreneurs, development organizations and public institutions. For HRNS, convening these actors around young people’s aspirations is part of creating an enabling environment in which learning can lead to networks, business ideas, professional development and new forms of participation in agriculture.

The wider lesson is therefore not that young people simply need to be persuaded to stay.

Instead of asking the next generation to inherit agriculture unchanged, organizations working across the sector can create the conditions for young people to help shape what agriculture becomes next.

And that leads to a more ambitious question:

What could agriculture become if young people had a greater role in creating it?

Coffee Camp 2026 was made possible thanks to the valuable support of more than 20 partner organizations committed to strengthening opportunities for coffee-growing youth in Honduras.

Coffee sector organizations: Honduran Coffee Institute (IHCAFE), NKG-BECAMO, Estucafé, Café de las Velas, Cocoa & Café, and Café La Taza. Cooperatives and associations: APCAFI, APROCCOR, APROCACERCHIL, CAFESCOR, CAFESMO, CAPUCAS, COCAMOL, COPRACNIL, PROEXO, and Río Grande.

Companies, cooperation and development organizations, and municipalities: Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung, Bayer – BLF, Lavazza Foundation, Solidaridad Latin America, Tri-National Network of Women of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala (HOSAGUA), Tri-National Commission of the Trifinio Plan – Trifinio Biosphere Project, Business Development Center – CDE MIPYME Santa Rosa, Rikolto Honduras, Heifer Honduras, Municipality of San Marcos (Ocotepeque), Municipality of La Unión (Copán), and Sustainable Harvest Honduras.