Scores of youth recruited to boost agri services
Published:Wednesday | November 18, 2020 | 12:18 AMChristopher Serju/Senior Gleaner Writer
A youth training programme is geared at closing the massive gap in Jamaica’s complement of agricultural extension officers, the technical personnel who operate as key liaisons with the island’s farmers.
The first cohort of 40 young women and men under the age of 35 will commence training in December under the Agriculture Aide Programme following Tuesday’s signing of a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and the HEART Trust and the HOPE Programme.
Upon graduation, the agricultural aides will be qualified to matriculate to further training and may be enlisted in the ranks of the agricultural ministry, which has a staff of 99 extension officers serving at least 223,000 registered farmers.
That complement is well below the worldwide best-practice minimum ratio of one extension officer to 500 farmers.
“Our extension ratio is about one to over 2,000 farmers,” said Agriculture Minister Floyd Green.
“We believe that we have crafted a programme that will allow us to extend our extension services while training our young people in the fundamentals of agriculture to ensure that our agriculture sector goes forward.”
The aides will be recruited through the Hope Programme and engage in classes by HEART before fanning out into the fields to undergo further technical training by Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) personnel. Following six months of training, they will be assessed and certified to work alongside, and under, the guidance of extension officers.
One hundred people will be trained under a three-year contract between the agriculture ministry and the HEART Trust and will form a “preferred pool of applicants for our extension services,” Green said.
A budget of $10.8 million has been aside for the project, under which the trainees will be paid $11,000 per week.
Meanwhile, CEO of RADA, Peter Thompson, is excited about the programme and the prospects for increased technical support.
“These persons when they come to us will be trained in data gathering and assessments, and, of course, some of them will, if they are so inclined, be trained in some of the technical areas so that they can assist extension officers,” said Thompson.
Permanent Secretary Dermon Spence sees the Agriculture Aide Programme as a window of opportunity for youth who might be undecided about a career path in farming.
“We believe that this programme will provide a window through which our young people will gain the insight that we want them to have into the career duties that abound in the agricultural sector. So we are looking forward to this vigorous engagement,” said Thompson.