In the 90s and early 2000, if one ended up in an agricultural college after high school, society regarded you as a failure while it glorified those who ended up in medical, law, or business school.
Those who ended up in agriculture-related programs, upon graduation branched to other professions doing things completely unrelated to their course. Over years this has changed over increasing levels of unemployment in the initial giant fields.
With the outbreak of the deadly covid-19 which rendered more youths jobless, youth involvement in agriculture was established as the lead hope and solution to the country’s youth unemployment crisis.
Agrofresh has since regionalized projects like the Youth Empowerment and Development in Commercial Agriculture Project where they are partnering with various entities like a bank of Uganda, post bank, and Uganda National Farmer’s Federation.
Laban Musinguzi, the Executive Director of Agrofresh Uganda said that together with partners, they are moving in various regions and areas to train the youths and make them understand how to evolve in Agriculture with more emphasis on urban farming.
The youths are often criticized for neglecting agriculture and the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, 2014 estimates that only 29 percent of the youth work in subsistence agriculture. In Musinguzi’s view, as the largest consumers in the food system, their participation is crucial for its sustenance.
He however said that the leading challenge that demands quick address is capital thus urging government and stakeholders to create capital access if effective youths participation in agriculture is to be attained.
“As a matter of fact, most youths are aged between 18-34 and most of the landowners in Uganda are above forty or fifty. This is an implication that we need to make it so easy for the youths to access Capital, then we can influence them to invest in urban farming.” He said.
He made the remarks while addressing journalists during the agricultural exhibition that was held at Farmer’s point in Kira over the weekend.
The exhibition was organized with the best intentions of bringing together sector players dealing in agricultural inputs, fresh produce, and agricultural machinery to showcase their products.
Laban further said that post-product losses are also another hindrance due to poor packaging and storing produces in stores that are not temperature regulated.
He said that there is over 30% of post-harvest loss adding that at the end of the day, one who invested UGX 100,000 loses UGX 30,000 thus urging urgent address of the challenge of Agribusiness amongst youths is to thrive.
“There is a need for temperature-regulated stores or coolers, we need freezer tracks so that we reduce the wastage,” he said.
Raymond Mugisha, the Manager Millennial farmers’ point who were hosts of the agricultural exhibition said that their partnership with Agrofresh is to enable all farmers to effectively market their products on a large scale.
He however said that farmers still use substandard seeds thus this retarding production of high-quality products.
“There’s need to provide farmers with quality seeds if we are to have quality products on the market which will widen the Agribusiness market.“
Agrofresh engages over 189 farmers through a platform where they sensitize farmers on how to boost their produce both in quantity and quality.
