Youths are interested in agriculture

News

18 Hrs Ago

Minister of Youth Development and National Service Foster Cummings says youths are interested in farming, provided that his ministry’s Agricultural Homestead Programme (YAHP) has been oversubscribed. As a end result, the ministry has prolonged the programme to part-time individuals.

Cummings stated, the programme launched in March was initially geared towards full-time college students and had a capability of 200 individuals. The programme acquired 1,400 responses.

“What we then took into consideration as a government is if there are so many young people interested, what can we do to expand and how can we train more of them?”

“We realised that we have young people who qualified but could not join simply because they could not do the programme full time. As a result cabinet agreed to introduce a part-time cycle.”

Cummings additionally stated he visited the homestead the place the present cohort of scholars are being skilled at Centeno and was impressed by the scholars’ enthusiasm.

“They were so excited that they almost convinced me to milk a cow,” Cummings stated.

“What we were able to dispel in the introduction of this programme is the myth that young people are not into farming.”

The YAHP programme is an agricultural in-person coaching programme with the aim of equipping younger individuals with the abilities to turn out to be agricultural entrepreneurs. The programme is damaged into two sections which might be taught over a two-year interval.

Year one will supply coaching in crop manufacturing and animal husbandry by means of the University of TT. Successful trainees may have entry to land, technical and monetary assist by means of the Land Settlement Agency.

In the second yr the budding agri-entrepreneurs will get hands-on coaching on land assigned to every trainee. They will turn out to be land lease holders on the finish of the programme, with entry to fast-tracking in grants and different technique of assist.

The part-time programme may have the same mannequin, giving 200 candidates entry to coaching, tools, land and different issues wanted to turn out to be a 21 st Century farmer.

The half time utility portal went dwell on Friday.