Yentrepreneurs – The Youth Are The Hopes Of The Father's Land

"With technology and agripreneurship," says William Dar in his Manila Timescolumn of today ("Attracting More Young Blood Into Agriculture" 2nd of 2 Parts (19 September 2019, Manila Times, manilatimes.net), "we could change the way the youth perceive farming." I agree, and I call the young entrepreneurs, yentrepreneurs– now we have to put in the youth the yen, or yearning, for agriculture.

As PH Secretary of Agriculture, Mr Dar is talking about youth entrepreneurship as avenue for carrying out 1 of his 8 paradigms for the New PH Agriculture: #1, modernizing agriculture. Since the concept of paradigms is new to agriculture here (even abroad), I decided to help by explaining in 79 short essays in my literal-literary ebook, Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Regained (267 pages, a free copy for you if you email me: frankahilario@gmail.com).

Has any PH agency been trying to attract the youth to rice farming? Googling, I found a likely attempt by PhilRice, reported by Jaime A Manalo IV in 2016, "Youth & Agriculture: The Infomediary Campaign In The Philippines" (downloadable as pdf, 172 pages; above image from the publication); unfortunately, it did not pursue youth entrepreneurship.

Mr Dar says, "The move to introduce mechanization measures in Thailand's agriculture comes at a time when the country is urging more of its youth to take up farming." Also, Thailand has the Dare to Return initiative, Mr Dar says. Dare to Return has attracted the young ones from the rural as well as the urban areas to engage in farming. In the Philippines, he says, the Rice Competitiveness Enhancement Program, RCEP, with P5 billion allotted to it yearly for the next 6 years, following the Rice Tariffication Law, "could serve as one of the main take-off points to technologize the country's farming sector, which would be pivotal in attracting more young people into agriculture."

Mr Dar is also thinking about the State Colleges & Universities, SCUs, dealing with agribusiness incubation, ABI – ABI worked for the Indians via the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, ICRISAT, when he was the Director General from 2000 to 2014; ICRISAT is based in India. The public & private sectors can help the SCUs there.

Mr Dar also suggests what should be exciting to the youth – the use of PC tablets and smartphones to run farm tractors. Differently, I am thinking more of using PC tablets as touch-screen digital libraries for data, information, technologies and systems in farming and gardening. That of course will need prior computer programming.

In June 2 years ago, when UP President Alfredo Pascual urged the UP Diliman graduates "to be the nation's hope" (see my essay, "Knowledge Revolution: What Does UP Know?" Creativity Works! icreativityworks.blogspot.com), I proposed that UP Los Baños ask more funds from the Secretary of Agriculture to build a knowledge base on agriculture written in popular English. I was already thinking of attracting high school students to agriculture via their love for technology – hence my choice of the PC tablet, never mind the cellphone:

When we cultivate Agriculture, we should cultivate Class!@517