This year's theme, Tomorrow's Farmers: An Uncertain Future, addresses the problems and possibilities of a crucial sector of tomorrow's world, young farmers. If the world's population is to be equitably and adequately fed and farming is to become a more democratic endeavor, young people here and abroad must play a key role. It is young people everywhere who have the idealism and the energy to convert today's globalization process into a vehicle for a better world. What, then, are the prospects for a youth-driven food-for-all world?

On the eve of a new century an unprecedented number of young people are reaching a time of decision on their careers. Most members of the global young are from less developed countries (LDCs) and live in poor rural areas. Young people in the U.S. and other rich countries are less numerous but no less crucial to a new and more just world regime.

Today's young people, who by their numbers and age are the vital cohort of the future, live in a moment of great change. Soon the world's population will become majority urban. The world economy is increasingly capitalist and tightly connected, often causing an increasing gap between rich and poor. Agriculture is experiencing a technological revolution which calls for more and more heavy investments, labor saving machinery and high-tech know-how. Free trade also seems to favor the rich countries. Globalization's narrow benefits bypass the dreams of developing-country youth.

Modern communication allow peoples everywhere to learn universal values and know what is happening in far-off places. Young LDC men and women are increasingly aware of their inherent rights, potential and their societies' neglect. They know they must be educated to participate in modern agriculture. They know that they must have access to land and credit to exist. They know that they should practice sustainable agriculture but that their fathers have been obliged to do what they can in an attempt to produce enough food for their families.

Further, they know what social and economic problems are pushing less developed country youth off the land and into cities. Mechanized agriculture in the hands of LDC elites is taking over more and more fertile land for export crops, thereby ousting small farmers who grow staples for regional consumers. Rapid LDC population growth subdivides small landholders, leaving no economically viable plots for all the owner's offspring. Young men and women, who may have had an ambition to continue the way of life of their forebears, are often forced into city slums where they are at the lowest rung of the ladder. Farming is the main livelihood in poor Third World countries which already have high rates of unemployment and underemployment.

While the dramatic move to the cities cannot be stopped, the process can be moderated by sup- port for small farmers. Many young U.S. farmers can identify with the problems of their LDC counterparts. Untold numbers of small American farmers, once the mainstay of the rural society, have been overwhelmed by agribusiness and land developers. Furthermore, U.S. minority farmers have experienced many of the same social and economic barriers faced by LDC youth that want to make a go of farming.