# Getting Young People to Farm: How Effective Is Thailand's Young Smart Farmer Programme?
## 6 Conclusions  
The decline in the number of young farmers, which Thailand and many other countries are currently experiencing, may lead to challenges in maintaining the countries' agricultural sector competitiveness, sustainability, and food security. To cope with these potential challenges, young farmers' capacity-building programmes have been implemented in many countries, including Thailand. In Thailand, the latest of such a programme is the Young Smart Farmer (YSF) programme. It started in 2014, with the desired outcomes to improve young farmers' financial independence, to enhance innovative farming method adoption of young farmers, and to obtain satisfaction from young farmers, thereby maintaining their long-term involvement. This was done with the hope to motivate young people to continue, return to, or enter farming. Although some of these programmes have been in place for some time, and the YSF programme has been in place for over seven years, no rigorous impact evaluation had yet been made. This study contributes to the literature on the role of government in retaining and increasing the number of young people in the agricultural sector. We did so by applying quantitative analytical methods to evaluate the success of the YSF programme, which specifically aimed to improve the economic status of young farmers. We applied the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method to evaluate the impact of the YSF programme on participants' net farm income and adoption of innovative farming methods other than common machinery and chemicals, and we used farmers' self-rated satisfaction to evaluate satisfaction with each aspect of the programme. We found that the majority of participants (79%) were satisfied with the overall programme and particularly with the training, field trips, and networking opportunities provided. Participants with low and medium farm income, renting most of their land, and solely producing rice were more satisfied with the overall programme. We could not detect a significant difference in net farm income or the probability of adopting innovative farming methods between participants and non-participants, and therefore, we failed to assure that the programme had been meeting two of its three desired outcomes. Therefore, the overarching aim of the programme of persuading young people to continue, return to, or enter farming may be less likely to be achieved. Reasons for this failure might be related to the training and field trips that are offered through the programme, that are not targeted to specific farmer groups, and that may fail to meet the knowledge and information needs of farmers with different experience and skill levels. Additionally, farmers might prefer support beyond the provisions of training and field trips, but this is not yet available through the programme. The results can help to improve the programme and to make it fit for the purpose of eventually haltering the exodus of young farmers in Thailand. The evaluation technique and the findings of this study are also relevant to similar programmesin other countries, such as the agricultural entrepreneurly education programme in the Philippines and the farmer field school programme in Sri Lanka, which have not yet been adequately evaluated and which face the similar implementation problems, leading to less effectiveness of the programmes [21; 24]. **Supplementary Materials:** The following are available online at [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su132111611/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su132111611/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su132111611/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su132111611/s1)): Table S1: Five steps of PSM analysis. Table S2: Reasons for participation in the Young Smart Farmer programme. Table S3: Receipt of knowledge and information from The Young Smart Farmer programme. Table S4: Satisfaction with the Young Smart Farmer programme. Table S5: Satisfaction with the Young Smart Farmers programme by participants' characteristics.