Every August 12, International Youth Day recognizes the contributions of young people to sustainable development. The 2026 theme, “Different Contexts, Common Aspirations,” reflects the different conditions young people face and the shared goals that connect their efforts.
This year’s theme is especially relevant to global food systems, which shape both the livelihoods and well-being of young people around the world. Globally, 44% of working youth were employed in agrifood systems in 202. At the same time, food insecurity among young people increased from 16.7% in 2014–2016 to 24.4% in 2021–2023. These figures show how closely young people’s futures are tied to the challenges and opportunities within food systems.
Young people are playing an increasingly active role in responding to these challenges and shaping the future of food systems. Across different regions and circumstances, they are developing solutions that reflect the needs of their own communities, from agriculture and school food to public policy, food waste, and the commercial environments that influence what people eat. The five examples below show how young people are turning local ideas into action and contributing to broader food-system change.
Bringing Precision Agriculture to Farmers — Benin
Food insecurity continues to affect communities across the West African nation of Benin, particularly during the lean season when access to food becomes more difficult. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) projects that more than 201,000 people will face acute food insecurity between June and August 2026. These pressures increase the need for practical agricultural innovations that can help farmers improve productivity, use resources more efficiently, and strengthen resilience against disturbances.
Young agricultural researcher Marietta Gonroudobou founded Agro Hikari to connect scientific knowledge with farmers. The platform translates agronomic research into practical guidance and has expanded into digital agriculture. Gonroudobou has also developed a drone-based spraying solution designed to make agricultural input use more precise.
In 2026, the World Food Prize Foundation named Gonroudobou a Top Agri-food Pioneer. Agro Hikari also won the Benin edition of the Prix Pierre Castel and received €25,000 plus a year of mentorship. The project remains an emerging model, and this support provides an opportunity to test its precision-agriculture services at a larger scale.
Rethinking the Waste That Comes With School Lunch — United States
Disposable food service items contribute to a large stream of plastic waste in the United States, including the polystyrene trays still used in many school cafeterias. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the country generated about 80,000 tons of polystyrene containers in 2018, and less than 5,000 tons were recycled. In Houston, three fourth-graders brought attention to this issue by questioning the use of disposable polystyrene trays in their school cafeterias.
In 2025, River Oaks Elementary students Celine David, Maddie Woods, and Dora Cabarcas researched alternatives to polystyrene lunch trays. They gathered more than 250 signatures on an online petition and presented their findings to Houston Independent School District leaders. Their efforts helped prompt HISD to launch a pilot program testing alternative trays at River Oaks Elementary and Hogg Middle School.
Evidence from other school systems suggests that reusable serviceware can substantially reduce cafeteria waste. A 2026 study of California elementary schools found that schools using reusable trays and other serviceware reduced packaging and serviceware waste by about 5 kilograms less packaging and serviceware waste per day than schools that continued using disposable items. The HISD pilot will help the district assess how these alternatives perform in practice and whether they can be expanded more widely. The students’ campaign shows how young people can use research and community engagement to influence decisions within their own schools and communities.
Turning Youth Innovation Into Food-System Solutions — Indonesia
Indonesia faces a generational challenge in agriculture. Almost 80 percent of the country’s farmers are age 40 or older, while young people ages 15 to 29 account for about half of its unemployed population. Together, these trends highlight an opportunity to connect youth employment and entrepreneurship with the future of agriculture.
The 2025 Youth Innovation Challenge received more than 230 proposals and selected 18 finalists for mentorship and training. Winning projects included vertical farming that reuses kitchen waste, artificial intelligence for fruit-fly control, and circular systems that convert food scraps into farm inputs. Ten innovators shared Rp84 million in awards and presented their ideas to government representatives.
The program gave young people an opportunity to develop and refine their ideas while connecting with institutions that could support implementation. Initiatives like this can provide early support for locally developed solutions, helping young innovators test what works and identify approaches with the potential to grow.
Challenging the Food Advertising Environment — United Kingdom
The food system extends beyond how food is grown and produced to the environments that influence what people see, choose, and buy. A 2025 University of Liverpool study found that 44 percent of surveyed outdoor advertisements promoted food or drinks, with one in four promoting unhealthy products. These advertisements appeared six times more often per kilometer in the most deprived areas studied.
Youth activists with Bite Back responded through the 2025 Commercial Break campaign. They placed youth-designed messages across 365 advertising spaces in London and called for stronger limits on unhealthy food marketing. Organizers estimated that the intervention prevented about 14.8 million people from being exposed to the advertisements that would otherwise have occupied those spaces.
UK-wide restrictions on less healthy food advertising on television before 9 p.m. and in paid online advertising took effect on January 5, 2026. However, the national rules do not cover billboards or other outdoor advertising, which remains a focus of Bite Back’s advocacy. The campaign demonstrates how young people can use evidence and advocacy to engage companies and policymakers around the food environments that shape consumption.
Bringing Youth Ideas Into Food Policy — Ecuador
Food loss and waste pose both environmental and food-security pressures in Ecuador. A 2025 report by the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Global FoodBanking Network estimates that more than 900,000 tons of food are lost or wasted each year. The report also found that 37 percent of the population experienced moderate or severe food insecurity between 2020 and 2022.
The World Food Forum Ecuador Youth Chapter has brought young people into national discussions about this issue. In October 2025, the chapter convened youth with government institutions, food banks, and civil-society organizations. The meeting helped gather evidence and advanced a coordinated proposal to reform Ecuador’s food loss and waste law.
In 2026, the chapter continued developing youth skills through training in project management, resource mobilization, and public policy. More than 30 young leaders from eight provinces participated in a May workshop that also strengthened connections among youth networks. Its work shows how youth groups can bring local concerns into formal policy discussions.
Cultivating Change
Global food challenges are complex, and they often result from deep, underlying, and interrelated factors that no single solution can address. Effective responses need to reflect the social, environmental, and economic conditions of each place. Meaningful progress therefore depends on understanding how a problem operates locally and developing solutions that respond to its underlying drivers.
The youth-led efforts featured here show how place-based action can create spaces for innovation. Young people are testing technologies, mobilizing communities, and engaging institutions around problems they experience locally. These experiments can reveal practices that work under specific conditions. Governments, companies, and nonprofits can then evaluate those lessons and adapt promising approaches elsewhere.
Youth-led ideas can have greater impact when young people have sustained support to develop and expand them. Mentorship builds technical and organizational capacity, financing provides the time and resources needed to strengthen promising initiatives, and partnerships with governments, civil society, businesses, and other institutions can create pathways for wider adoption. FAO research similarly highlights investment, meaningful participation in decision-making, access to skills and resources, and improved financing as key conditions for youth engagement in agrifood-system transformation.
International Youth Day is an opportunity to celebrate young people’s contributions while recognizing what they need to turn ideas to lasting change. It’s also an opportunity to turn that creativity into action. Young people can support EARTHDAY.ORG’s Canopy Tree Project, explore our Climate Education campaign, or join The Great Global Cleanup. Each offers a way to take action and mobilize others. This International Youth Day, find a challenge in your community and help cultivate a solution.
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