Youth advised on agriculture

Mar 04, 2020

To do farming as business, Kyateka said, one of the challenge we face is that most youth think they need a lot of money to start.

AGRIBUSINESS

To attract youth to embrace agriculture, Francis Mondo Kyateka, the Assistant Commissioner for youth affairs at the Gender Ministry, has advised the youth to think creatively and come up with new innovative farming techniques, which can stand the changing climate.

"Let us remove the prejudice of thinking that agriculture is backward and talk about agriculture as a respectable undertaking. We need to bring out this myth so that young people are able to understand," explained Kyateka.

He made the remarks during the skilling youth for innovative climate-smart agribusiness symposium at Hotel Africana recently. The meeting attracted over 50 participants from various sectors including, government, non-government, academicians, training institutions, and the private sector.

To do farming as business, Kyateka said, one of the challenge we face is that most youth think they need a lot of money to start.

However, he advised youth who want to progress in agriculture to build and use their networks appropriately because your network is your net worth.

 "Youth should also change their attitude and embrace modern farming techniques because agriculture business is not for the retiring people. But rather for the young people since they have the energy and the zeal," emphasised Kyateka.

Besides the unfavourable weather condition, during the training, Mathew Makanga also pointed out most of the critical challenges young people encounter to do agriculture as a business. These include financial literacy, financial support, and land.

Makanga adds: "The issue of family size also affects our capacity to make it via agriculture and any other business. We need sexual reproductive health integrated into every undertaking of the young people. We cannot make money from one acreage of land when we have a big family."

Since many youth are unemployed, some are school dropouts, Phiona Sanyu, a programme coordinator at Youth Forward Learning Partnership Development Research, and Training said the symposium was organised to engage young people into productive agriculture in order to improve their income as well as transform their lives.

"To ensure more youth get attracted in agriculture, Sanyu said they are advocating and talking to policymakers to see that different approaches on training and skills development in agriculture are adopted.

With agribusiness, Kyateka said: "You can do much with a small portion of land. The issue is application of scientific means of agriculture to make one-acre work for you. It is not the acreage because we have seen people of big chunks of unutilised land."

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