Majority of GSA graduates do not pursue careers in agriculture – Min Mustapha

…says Gov’t working on solutions to get more young people involved in sector

Acknowledging that a significant number of students who study at the Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA) do not pursue careers in related fields, Agriculture Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha emphasised that more needs to be done to ensure younger persons are attracted to the sector.
The lack of post-graduate participation within the agriculture sector was highlighted by the Minister on Tuesday during the GSA’s 59th graduation exercise at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC).
Whilst delivering feature remarks at the ceremony, the Agriculture Minister revealed that despite the institution having trained a significant number of persons over the years, only a handful of these persons are actively involved in agriculture.
“Today, you are graduating here. As we have seen over the years, today is the 59th graduation exercise at the Guyana School of Agriculture. And when you take altogether the number of young people who have graduated from the Guyana School of Agriculture, and you add that total, and you look at the agriculture sector, and see how many persons are involved in agriculture, it’s just a small number of those graduates.”

On this point, Mustapha attributed the low level of participation in agriculture to several issues such as the stereotyping of persons who work in the sector.
“Why? There is a reason. And we have recognised that reason, especially His Excellency the President. He said we have to make agriculture more attractive for young people. Because young people see agriculture as a media job. A job for old people. A job for people who never went to school. A job that is very labour intensive.”
As such the Minister revealed that over the years the Government has been working to implement and develop new strategies that will make agriculture more appealing to Guyanese citizens.
“And today, we are now moving, we are bringing in modern equipment, we are modernising the agriculture sector. We are moving from a labour-intensive sector to a more modern sector. We are expending large sums of budgetary allocation to reduce the cost of input, and to reduce take-out taxes in this sector. And we have a comprehensive programme that we are now rolling out, or we have rolled out over the last four years, to make agriculture more attractive, make agriculture more competitive, make agriculture more resilient, and make agriculture a sector that people in our country will embrace.”
Additionally, as the Government pushes to promote more modern and sustainable agriculture practices, the Agriculture Minister highlighted that the GSA curriculum was revised in keeping with this mandate.
“Over the last few years that you have at the Guyana School of Agriculture, we have tailored the curriculum so that you can be trained in the new way that we want agriculture to be done in our country. Gone are the days when we used to do agriculture how our foreparents did it. We want an agriculture sector that is resilient, technologically savvy, new crops, and an agriculture sector that embraces a Government’s vision, His Excellency the President’s vision, in reducing our food import bill.”
Meanwhile, this year, a whopping $97.6 billion is budgeted for the advancement of Guyana’s agricultural sector, as it continues to rapidly diversify into new crops while recording tremendous growth.