KUCHING: The state government is concerned that there are so few young agropreneurs in Sarawak.
According to Agriculture, Native Land and Regional Development Assistant Minister Dr Abdul Rahman Ismail the percentage of youth involvement in the state’s agricultural sector was far from encouraging.
“Our youth make up only 12 per cent of Sarawak’s agricultural entrepreneurs,” he said at a press conference after officiating at a seminar at the Malaysian Production Corporation in Demak Jaya yesterday.
Attributing the low number of youth in the industry due to negative perception of farmers, the assistant minister said the big challenge now is to figure out ways to make young people interested in agriculture.
“The perception is that agriculture is not lucrative and only suitable for rural people. This needs to change,” he said.
Realising the need to highlight the importance of agriculture for food security, the state government will hold agricultural roadshows next year to educate the public especially youth.
“We need to convince our young people that agriculture today can be transformed by introducing Smart Farming. While educating them we need to ensure that our food chain is secure and sustainable,” he said.
On how to make children interested in agriculture, he said the state government would provide schools with models of fertigation systems.
“We may put them in selected schools. By doing that, we hope that MPC and other corporations could help expose our future generation early to that sort of development,” he said.
