Urbanization, better literacy standards and greater skill attainment has moved the younger generation away from agriculture. This is all the more pronounced in Kerala, the state with highest degree of urbanization in India. The students as the next generation of consumers, should be on the focus of the educational efforts regarding agriculture and food processing because, the political and social decisions of the today's students will have the power to change the agricultural industry. In this context, the current study attempted to analyse the awareness level of higher secondary school students from state and CBSE syllabus on agriculture. The results showed that only 17 per cent of the students had high awareness on the components of agriculture. There existed huge variation in the awareness level of students from rural and urban background and also between students under state and CBSE streams of education. The students exhibited highest awareness level on the crops grown in Kerala whereas the lowest level of awareness was recorded for the food security component. A clear cut diminishing pattern of ranks from Rural state -- Rural CBSE --Urban state -- Urban CBSE with regard to awareness on agriculture was obtained in Kruskal Wallis test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]