DO NOT PREVENT young people from getting involved in agriculture.
Chief executive officer of the Barbados Agricultural Society, James Paul made this call yesterday at a Rural Development Commission (RDC)/BAS/Pinnacle Feeds pig feeding strategies workshop at the Glebe Resource Centre, St George.
“We sometimes underestimate the intuition and experience youth can bring to solving problems on the farm. Do not discourage your children from participating.
“We need to get away from the mistake we make in our society that we should not seek to involve them early in our business. We may have a chap who is very successful as a farmer and builds his home out of it, but then the same things in which he makes his money, he says to his child, ‘no, that is not for you’,” he said.
Paul said Barbados was producing well trained young people in agriculture who were more familiar with some of the new technology to which some older farmers were resistant.
“To survive in the world of business, you need to embrace technology. The sad thing is, some of our older folk are not willing to do so.
“If we have young people whose minds are still active and who are still trainable and are willing to embrace new technologies, we need to give them that opportunity,” he said.
Paul advised farm managers to allow workers to attend training seminars as managers depended on their workers to use expensive equipment and properly raise their stock.
The objective of the workshop was to increase the technical capacity of the RDC’s loan recipients in pig production so they would be able to feed their pigs with the nutritional requirements in order to maximise growth and save money. (CA)
