**Table 1:** As Incomes Rise, More Food System Jobs Are in Food Manufacturing and Services

|Sectoral share of em|ployment (%)|Low-income<br>(Eastern<br>and<br>Southern Africa)|Middle-<br>income<br>(Brazil)|High-income<br>(United<br>States)|
|---|---|---|---|---|
|Food system|Farming|73|15|2|
||Food manufacturing|2|8|1|
||Food services|5|8|7|
||Total AFS|80|31|10|
|Non-food system|Off-farm (non-food related)|20|70|90|

**<u>Source:</u>** World Bank and IFAD, 2017. The total for Brazil does not add up to 100 due to rounding error.

The downstream AFS is indeed expanding rapidly in developing countries across the globe as part of the transformation of food markets. Several recent case studies support the beneficial effects of the AFS and related development of agri-food value chains for labor force participation, income, and working conditions, including for the poor and for women. Examples from the Future of Work in Agriculture conference include Sauer et al. (2019) for domestic food systems in Tanzania (2019), Edwards (2019) for post farm oil-processing farms in Indonesia,<sup>6</sup> and Maertens and Fabry (2019) for horticulture exports from Senegal to European markets. The latter shows how vertical integration of production to meet the quality and standards requirements for European markets increased not only labor force participation, employment, and income in the source areas but also educational attainment and lower fertility rates—evidence that the development of ag-export supply chains contributes to the broader socio-demographic transformation.

Fourth, fears of a mass exodus of African youth out of agriculture, disproportionate with normal patterns of youth transitions out of agriculture as countries develop, appear to be overblown. Given Africa’s youth bulge, youth employment is especially high on the continent’s policy agenda. There is a perception that African youth may no longer be interested in agriculture (IFAD 2019). Exit from agriculture is a normal part of the structural transformation, and rural youth, in general, are less involved in agriculture than are older cohorts. It is mostly through youth that the structural transformation occurs: young people on average are more agile, educated, and adaptive to changing labor market conditions. Rural youth typically have less access to land than their parents did, because many parents are not ready to transfer the farm or the farm is too small to set all children up with viable farms, and land (rental) markets are underdeveloped.

A recent study of sectoral employment transitions in six African countries shows that both adults and youth are leaving agriculture, but not disproportionately relative to these countries’ level of development (Christiaensen et al. 2015). In the 13-country study mentioned previously, after

> 6 Edwards (2019) shows how the introduction of post-farm AFS firms, such as oil-palm processing factories in Indonesia, can create positive spillovers through the development of economic linkages, infrastructure, and local market integration. These spillovers can lead to the expansion and birth of towns and the introduction of new firms and other economic and social organizations.

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