MANAGE organized a Consultative Workshop on “Opportunities for Youth in Agricultural Development” at MANAGE, Hyderabad, from 22 to 23 September 2016. In this note, participants Sunil Peddi and S. Kiran Reddy share their experience.
THE CONTEXT
MANAGE organised a consultative workshop on “Opportunities for Youth in Agricultural Development” from 22 to 23 September 2016. The workshop was organised at MANAGE, Hyderabad, mainly to share successful good agricultural practices, programs, financial services, entrepreneurial opportunities and related policies for strengthening the involvement of youth in agriculture. The two-day consultative workshop was attended by 18 officials representing different fields across the country.
THE PROGRAMME
The workshop was broadly categorized into three phases. Phase I focused on learnings from the experience of experts in agriculture and the allied sector regarding youth involvement. Phase II included pooling the opinions of workshop participants. Phase III was on formulation of recommendations based on the outcomes of earlier phases.
Phase I: Inauguration and Learning from Experiences of Experts
Dr. P. Chandrashekara welcomed the participants and he provided a brief overview of the workshop. Smt. V. Usha Rani, IAS Director General, MANAGE, Hyderabad, in her address highlighted the underlying reasons behind lack of youth involvement in agriculture and the need for designing effective policies for attracting and retaining youth in agriculture.
Mr. Dnyaneshwar Bodke, President, Abhinav Farmers Club, Pune, shared his experiences of linking small farmers to markets through their club. He appealed to the participants to see agriculture as a business and the importance of hi-tech farming especially in the horticultural sector.
Dr. P. Venkatesh (Senior Scientist, NAARM) explained in detail about the recently launched ICAR scheme “Attracting and Retaining Youth in Agriculture” (ARYA). Dr. Uma Maheshwar Rao, (freelance horticulture consultant) presented on the business opportunities for youth in the horticulture sector. Dr. K. Srinivas, Principal Scientist, NAARM discussed the experiences and challenges in agricultural incubation and the various initiatives of different organizations in business incubation.
Dr. Ahmad Hussain, Prof. (Agronomy), PJTSAU, Hyderabad, briefed about various micro and small scale enterprise opportunities in agriculture. Dr. Kondal Reddy, Registrar, PVNRTVU, Hyderabad, who explained about various business opportunities for youth in animal husbandry sector. Mr. Parthasarathi, AGM, SBIRD, Hyderabad, spoke about the financial aspects required to setup a business and the sub-sectors and businesses for which loans are provided.
Dr. M Persis, Sr. Executive, NFDB, Hyderabad, in her presentation focussed on the scope for employment and income generating activities for youth in the fisheries sector. Dr. Venkatesh Bhat, Scientist, IIMR, Hyderabad, explained about the initiatives and experiences of IIMR in production and marketing of various value added millets wherein youth can play a major role.
Dr. K.C. Gummagolmath, Dy., Director, MANAGE,Hyderabad discussed about the skill training for rural youth and the scheme for Farmers Capacity Assessment and Certification. Mr. Naidu, (Designation) PI Foundation, Hyderabad, briefed about tackling the opportunities for rural youth in agriculture and allied sector and the CSR initiatives of PI Foundation.
Mr. Rahul Krishnan, Thematic Anchor at Kudumbasree, Government of Kerala, discussed about the experience of Kudumbashree programme and highlighted the different approaches involved in small and micro enterprise development.
Dr. P. Chandrashekara, Director (Agril. Extn.), MANAGE, Hyderabad, shared his experience of AC&ABC scheme to develop agripreneurship in India (www.agriclinics.net). The AC&ABC scheme has played a key role in attracting and retaining the rural youth in agriculture sector, especially in providing services to farming community through establishment of agri-business initiatives.
Mr. M. Dhaibar from Pune, who launched his own website called www.downloadprojectreports.com briefed about the same and motivated the participants to be agripreneurs.
Phase II: Pooling the opinions of participants
In this phase, the participants shared their opinion in groups to come up with specific recommendations. Some of the suggestions to retain youth in agriculture included the following:
- Changing agricultural education policy at the national level,
- Changing the mindset of people from job seeking to job providing,
- Training rural youth at large scale,
- Special policies to link farmers to direct market and
- Decentralizing the infrastructural development from national or state capital towards rural areas.
Phase III: Formulation of Recommendations
In this final phase Dr. P. Chandrashekara presented the most important recommendation of the workshop.
OUR REFLECTIONS
All presentations were based on the experts’ personal experience with attracting and retaining you in agriculture and agri-business. The question and answer sessions after every presentation made the sessions very interactive. After the two-day workshop, we were more enriched with information related to the opportunities for youth in agricultural development and how they could be supported.
FINAL REMARKS
The consultative workshop was informative and has helped participants to consider several new ways of addressing the youth migration to urban centers and how they could be supported and retained in the agricultural sector.
Mr. Sunil Peddi and Mr. S. Kiran Reddy are Senior Research Fellows at the National Institute of Agricultural Extension Management (MANAGE), Hyderabad. They could be contacted at sunil.peddi90@gmail.com ; and skiranreddys52888@gmail.com respectively.
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