Delta explains reason for selecting only youth farmers into YAGEP

Delta State Bureau for Job and Wealth Creation, yesterday, said that only youths who already own farms and have passion and interest in agriculture were selected for the 2020/2021 cycle of its Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurs Programme (YAGEP) in the state.

Eric Eboh, a professor and the chief job creation officer of the state who made the disclosure on Thursday, said that was the directive of the state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa to the bureau as experience had shown that many youths seemed to be forced into the agric programme in the past without them having an interest in agriculture.

The pilot scheme of job and wealth creation commenced with the 2015/2016 cycle targetting jobless youths in the state. Under Green-YAGEP, the government trained and established the youths with starters to run their choice farm enterprises as chief executive officers (CEOs) with the aim that they would train others.

A few years after, Brown-YAGEP was introduced to extend support to existing youth farmers who needed financial support for their enterprises, thus, they were enrolled into the programme, given refresher courses as well as support packages to boost their farm enterprises.

Eboh now said the state government is shifting more attention to the Brown-YAGEP because those who benefit already own farms, have passion and interest in agriculture, hence with them the problem of raising agric entrepreneurs is solved in the state is solved.

It was very catastrophic forcing youths who had no interest in agriculture to be part of the programme, he said.

“Those YAGEP beneficiaries are those we encouraged to start and we trained them in agriculture. Now, there’s no time for that because we have found out that it is better to have people who have underlying passion and interest in agric, those who are determined to make agriculture their enterprise, and help them to grow and survive rather than chasing people who don’t have interest at all. That’s why we stopped Green-YAGEP”, he explained.

Eboh made the disclosure while addressing the 128 youth farmers who made up the 2nd batch of the 2020/2021 cycle of the Brown-YAGEP during the Orientation and Farm Enterprise Training (OFET) workshop organized for them at Government House, Asaba.

According to him, “Since the inception of Governor Ifeanyi Okowa-led administration in 2015, we have run first to fifth cycles which cover 1,174 YAGEP beneficiaries. We are now in the sixth cycle. The first batch in the sixth cycle covered 158 beneficiaries while we invited 128 of you for the second cycle.

So far, we have 286 beneficiaries under the current cycle of YAGEP, he said, adding that the process of selection was transparent and objective.

While noting that the first batch was under crop production, he said the second batch included those in livestock enterprises namely: fish production, pig production, poultry as well as bee keeping (apiculture) which he said was newly introduced into the programme.

Eboh said that the workshop was aimed at helping the beneficiaries grow in their enterprises, help them manage their agriculture successfully, helping them to understand how to write business plans for their agric enterprises, helping them to understand and to imbibe the principle of record-keeping and encouraging them to get their farms registered with Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).

Edward Mekwunye, the executive assistant to the governor on the directorate of Youth Monitoring and Mentoring (DYMM) who was represented by Festus Eligbo, the head of technical DYMM, advised the beneficiaries to apply knowledge gained at the training to ensure business success. They also assured the beneficiaries that the directorate would continue to monitor and mentor them.

Chukwuka Osumili, Emmanuel, Osuzuwa and Charles Abutoh, the senior special assistants to the governor, charged them to be committed to their enterprises and take advantage of the programme to take their business to next level.

Sunday Evelyn and Shedrack Osakwe who are beneficiaries under Bee Keeping and Fish Production respectively expressed gratitude to the state government for the job creation initiative and pledged to apply the knowledge acquired to improve their farming technique.