THE City Agriculture's Office (CAO) is launching a new program Agribeshies: The AgriBiz Youth Club of Davao City.
CAO head Leo Brian Leuterio said, during a phone interview yesterday, May 3, the program is designed to partner with students taking up Agribusiness courses. With the joint effort of the students and of their office, sustainable agribusiness projects and its implementation will be identified and planned out.
Leuterio said funding for the project will be from the local government of Davao.
"Agribeshies is designed to train our youth in the farm areas specific to agribusiness because Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio believes that agribusiness is an important and relevant strategy in positively engaging the youth of Davao City to agriculture," said Leuterio.
He added the project envisions school-based agribusiness students to be exposed to actual agribusiness management and hands-on training to be able to increase their interest on agribusiness. This will also allow them to collaborate with other agribusiness students from other schools for implementation of other projects.
"The agri youth is vital in the future food production objectives of the city and the country," said Leuterio explaining why the government is introducing agri-business to the youth.
This new program is locally initiated by CAO and is launched simultaneous to the celebration of this year's Farmer's and Fisherfolk's Month.
Different local organizations and government institutions are recently keen on promoting agriculture to the youth.
On a press conference December of last year, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) Davao Region encouraged the younger generation to enroll in farm schools.
This is together with the current focus of Tesda which is to develop farm schools in the city.
"We want to attract young people to agriculture because this is important to all of us. If we make our farm into a tourism destination and school then it will be more interesting to them," said Senator Cynthia Villar, the Senate Committee Chair for Agriculture and Food during her visit in Davao City last month. (Sean Belen, FSUU Intern )