Yemen’s army and its allies have seized control of two key roads near the western port city of Hodeidah from Houthi rebels, military sources said.

Abdulrahman Saleh Abou Zaraa, head of an elite military unit known as the Giant Brigades, said on Wednesday his forces took control of the Kilo 16 area, cutting off the Houthis’ main supply route linking Hodeidah city to the rebel-held capital Sanaa.

The army also captured a second supply route around Hodeidah, known as Kilo 10, the AFP news agency reported.

The Saudi-Emirati-led military coalition resumed air raids on Wednesday in support of Yemeni-allied forces seeking to capture the Red Sea port city from the rebels, residents said.

Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from neighbouring Djibouti, said fighting was ongoing around Kilo 16 with the “Houthis shelling the area in a counterattack measure”.

“There are no reports of any casualties but you would bet they would be high with this intensity of the bombardment,” he said.

Fighting near Hodeidah – the main gateway for imports of relief supplies and commercial goods into the country – has escalated since June 13 after the Saudi-UAE alliance launched a wide-ranging operation to retake the strategic seaport.

The offensive is being carried out by a disparate collective of forces including the National Resistance, a group of fighters loyal to Yemen’s former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Tihama Resistance, a group of fighters loyal to Yemen’s President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, and the Giant Brigades, a military unit backed by the United Arab Emirates.

Riyadh and Abu Dhabi see Hodeidah port as the main entry point of weapons for the Houthis and have accused their regional rival Iran of sending missiles to the rebels, a charge Tehran has denied.

Lifeline for millions

Aid agencies have warned an assault on the Hodeidah port could shut down one of the last remaining lifelines for millions of hungry civilians.

The city’s seaport was responsible for delivering 70 percent of Yemen’s imports – mostly humanitarian aid, food and fuel – before 2015.

More than eight million Yemenis – a number greater than the entire population of Switzerland – are on the verge of famine.

The war in Yemen, the region’s poorest country, started in 2014 when the Houthis overran much of the country, including Sanaa.

The conflict escalated in 2015 when Saudi Arabia and its Sunni Arab allies – who accuse the Shia Houthis of serving as Iranian proxies – launched a massive air campaign in Yemen aimed at rolling back Houthi gains.

According to the UN, at least 10,000 people have been killed since the coalition intervened in Yemen. The death toll has not been updated in years and is likely to be far higher.

Multiple rounds of UN-brokered peace talks have failed to achieve any breakthrough and last week, the Houthis refused to attend talks in Geneva after three of its “demands” were not met.

“The Houthi no-show at the Geneva peace process is further proof that the liberation of Hodeidah is what is needed to bring them to their senses & constructively engage in the political process,” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said in Twitter post.

UN envoy Martin Griffiths is travelling to Muscat on Wednesday and later Sanaa and Riyadh to secure “a firm commitment from the parties to convene for continued consultations”.

Meanwhile, in Washington DC, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he has certified to Congress that Saudi Arabia and the UAE were working “to reduce the risk of harm” on Yemeni civilians. With the certification, the US would be able to continue its participation in the war, allowing it to refuel Saudi planes involved in the strikes in Yemen.

El Milagro, El Salvador – Cecilia Lopez loves breathing the fresh air in the countryside of El Salvador but, like many her age, the 18-year-old doesn’t plan on staying in her rural village much longer.

Balancing a heavy sack of fertiliser on her head as she descends the steep path leading to her family’s plot of corn, Lopez says she dreams of studying to become an accountant, or if she can get a scholarship, an aircraft engineer.

“We always need agriculture, but it’s not good as a business,” she says. “The vision of the youth here is to not continue with agriculture. It’s not sustainable.”

In her community of El Milagro, a tiny hamlet of fewer than 200 people nestled amid lush greenery about 50km northeast of the capital San Salvador, most families grow corn, beans, and other crops to cover their own needs and sell what is left over to make a meagre living.

While weighing her own options, Lopez also encourages her older brother to find an alternative that will help him get ahead without getting trapped in debt to guarantee harvests that might never pay off.

“Don’t be a farmer,” she tells him.

Their story is a familiar one among a generation of rural youth in El Salvador. Years of migration towards cities and the United States in search of work and sometimes to escape gang threats has left the country with an ageing population of farmers and many challenges to revitalising the sector.

According to experts, including the UN Development Program, the situation could affect food security in a country where nearly half of households are already food insecure. 

Maria Santos, a 55-year-old organic grower selling a few baskets of produce at a vibrant market sprawled in the street in Nahuizalco, 70km west of San Salvador, also sees the trend.

“Here it’s rare for youth to want to farm now,” she explains, wedged between other subsistence farmers selling mostly similar products. “It’s worrying because as the elderly are dying, someone needs to be responsible.”

‘Livable rural areas’

According to the UN Development Program, the demographics of rural workers in El Salvador are “atypically” clumped in the 16-25 and over 56 age brackets. Government statistics indicate the average farmer age is 57.

Consultations by the International Fund for Agricultural Development suggest many young people around the world are not averse to rural life per se but want options that offer a quality of life beyond subsistence.

Wilfredo Rubio, adviser to the minister of agriculture, argues that the average age data likely does not offer a complete picture of farmer demographics. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that rural youth retention remains an important challenge.

“What we have to do is create attractive, livable agriculture that allows youth to feel good,” Rubio says. He stresses that the draw to cities isn’t just job opportunities, but also better access to basic services such as electricity, water, education, healthcare, recreation facilities, and telecommunications that may not reach the rural poor.

“Agriculture doesn’t get abandoned because it’s agriculture, it gets abandoned because of the conditions [in the countryside], and that’s what we need to transform,” he adds.

Government initiatives to support the sector include a scholarship programme for rural youth to study subjects like agronomy or beekeeping, financing for entrepreneurial initiatives, and efforts to promote agritourism.

Many believe more government support could give small farmers a much-needed boost. Older producers echo long-standing demands for agricultural subsidies, guaranteed land access, and increased technical support, while younger people often highlight the need for innovation.

In the US, where prohibitive farmland costs squeeze out young producers, the average age of farmers has also crept up in recent decades to 58.

‘Opportunities to experiment’

About 30km outside the capital, a cooperative organic agriculture initiative focused on creating opportunities for women and youth is bearing fruit.

The Canasta Campesina cuts out middlemen by selling local fruits, vegetables, eggs and herbs produced by small farmers directly to consumers in San Salvador in a bi-weekly farm basket.

Crates heaped with green onions, plantains, limes, cucumbers, eggplant, and other produce offer a glimpse of the initiative’s offerings at the cooperative’s headquarters in Comasagua, a town tucked among rolling hills about halfway between the capital and the Pacific coast.

Ever Valles, Canasta Campesina president, explains that the project, launched in 2012 with the help of international NGOs, aims to create a producer-consumer relationship based on fair prices and solidarity.

“Ninety-two percent of the vegetable sales goes straight to the campesino,” 26-year-old Valles explains, contrasting the project’s cooperative model to conventional markets where intermediaries gobble up a hefty portion of farmers’ profits.

The Canasta Campesina is also looking to leverage technology by developing two new applications: an e-commerce tool to sell the produce baskets online and a “virtual library” to share agricultural knowledge between producers.

Valles says the technological innovation is not only attractive to youth, but also works towards bridging a digital divide that has traditionally limited small farmers’ access to technology and information.

Valles never saw a future for himself in his family’s subsistence agriculture. He left the community to find work close to the capital, but insecurity and violence soon forced him to return home.

I hope tomorrow there are people who stay to keep working [the fields]. Because in the end, even the richest people need agriculture.

Cecilia Lopez, 18-year-old aspiring aircraft engineer

He still didn’t know how he would make a living back in his village of El Cortes, a short drive away from Comasagua. His mother, one of Canasta Campesina’s 45 associates, encouraged him to get involved. Youth now make up a third of the cooperative.

For Valles, factors limiting youth involvement in agriculture include negative societal perceptions about farming, an education system that doesn’t encourage creative thinking, and authorities’ failure to listen to the needs of rural youth.

“Youth aren’t given opportunities to experiment,” he says, standing beside stacks of empty baskets ready to be filled with the next week’s produce.

He argues conditions will be better in the countryside when a farmer “isn’t seen as a day worker, but as someone who can make proposals.”

‘Necessity not vocation’

Rubio, adviser to the minister of agriculture, blames years of trade liberalisation under two decades of right-wing governments for undermining El Salvador’s agricultural sector by flooding the market with cheap imports and laying the foundations of an export-oriented model.

He claims the government’s hands remain tied by a conservative-dominated Congress. For years, business-friendly politicians have blocked proposed legislation that would boost state support for small-scale agriculture.

Traditionally an agricultural economy, El Salvador has shifted in recent decades to depend much more significantly on the service sector and industry. Agriculture employed 19 percent of the workforce in 2017 compared to 38 percent in 1991, according to World Bank data.

For Brenda Rosales, 30, a facilitator with the ActionAid International-funded initiative Global Platform El Salvador, which focuses on building youth activism networks, structural change is an important piece of the puzzle.

She says many Salvadorans take on family responsibilities at a young age, forcing them to find work “not for vocation, but necessity”.

“If [youth] don’t see agriculture as a way to generate income – and fair income – they won’t be able to stay, they will always have to look for something else,” she says, stressing the need for political will to create favourable conditions for farmers.

Back in El Milagro, Lopez, the 18-year-old aspiring aircraft engineer who has helped cultivate her family’s crops as long as she can remember, believes the challenges likely run deeper than a lack of incentive programs or financing.

She says government handouts ultimately won’t remedy deteriorated farmlands or mitigate increasingly unpredictable climate factors that affect harvests.

But she also questions what fate youth in her generation are spelling for their communities. “What happens tomorrow when these people in agriculture are gone, thanks to us?” she ponders.

“I hope tomorrow there are people who stay to keep working [the fields]. Because in the end, even the richest people need agriculture.”

Reporting for this story was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation as part of its Adelante Latin America Reporting Initiative.

Image: Lili sams/mashable