The Mekong Youth Farm Network (Y-Farm) is a consortium of environmentally minded people from across the Mekong region of Se-Asia working toward a sustainable future for organic agriculture and humanity overall. We aspire to unite youths, local authorities, researchers, local farming experts, and others from Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar in a four-day workshop (November 6–9, 2024) to learn from each other’s knowledge about sustainable farming and development. The goal is to build a strong, effective, and resilient farming network in the Mekong region and beyond to tangibly address topical issues related to globalization, climate change, and other development-related phenomena.

Y-Farm is an initiative for environmental and socioecological resilience that focuses on youth engagement and sustainable agriculture education. It provides training in organic farming practices and develops agrotourism opportunities to improve farming system perspectives and bolster sustainable food systems. We work diligently to educate younger generations in various ways, including demonstrating organic practices and providing agrotourism opportunities. This grassroots organization is keen to support aspiring farmers, enhance economic prospects, protect ecosystems, and preserve local cultures via information and cross-cultural exchange. Our network envisions a new generation of young farmers and consumers who adopt sustainable practices on their farms and throughout their communities.

Y-Farm, initially funded by the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) Seeds for the Future program, was established in 2017. We have since provided training courses on sustainable farming to over 550 children, students, and young farmers across Mekong communities. In 2017, we organized a Y-Farm camp for over twenty-five youths in Laos. This initiative supported nine small-scale farming systems and facilitated youth exchange on sustainable farming for twelve youths in the Mekong region. In 2019, we supported thirty young farmers in the Mekong region by helping them share their experiences and knowledge about sustainable farming activities. We have also engaged blind people to support their farming activities. During the COVID-19 period, we supported many farmers with local seeds, fertilizers, and techniques so that they could grow their food. We have also collaborated with stakeholders in developing an application (ClimaApp) that helps them cope with climate change-related phenomena; this has included training over 300 farmers in Thailand and Vietnam on how to use this app. 

With this success, we aspire to maintain our strategies to target more youth, young farmers, and children in the Mekong region. This is why we are organizing the Y-Farm Network’s “Connecting Youth and Agroecology in the Mekong Region” workshop. During the initial stages of this project, women will collaborate with men to create and organize appropriate activities in Chiang Mai and Lamphun in northern Thailand. The women will play a variety of roles in this project’s implementation, including as presenters and leaders. They will share their expert knowledge and experience with attendees in hopes of cultivating ways to further collaborate and meet goals for a future focused on socioecological sustainability.

This Y-Farm Camp assumes that younger generations (especially youth) in the Lower Mekong Subregion are aware of, and perhaps experienced with, sustainable agriculture activities, particularly since this region is facing serious development-related impacts (hydropower dams, irrigation development projects, etc.) and climate change phenomena. 

The idea behind the 3rd Y-Farm Camp is that we apply the socioecological systems framework and related interactions to analyze how the Mekong’s younger generation (youth, students, young researchers, farmers, etc.) engage institutions to interact with sustainable agriculture in their communities, networks, schools, etc. 

Relating to the socioecological systems framework, the Y-Farm Network is based on our members sharing relevant topics on the dimensions of (i) agroecology, (ii) food sovereignty and farmers’ movements, (iii) agribusiness management and marketing, (iv) agritourism, (v) local seeds, (vi) volunteerism, (vii) urban farming, (viii) sustainable farming, and (ix) climate change. To accomplish this initiative, we selected five farms that represent social groups and sustainable agriculture systems to see the differences and sameness among individuals, groups, and farm functions.