Enticing More Youth As Aggie-Based Entrepreneurs – Or Geniuses

In his Thursday Manila Times column ("Attracting More Young Blood Into Agriculture" 1st of 2 parts, 12 September 2019, manilatimes.net), Secretary of Agriculture William Dar is thinking of more youth going into agriculture, for instance enticed by the DA's Agricultural Training Institute, ATI, offering scholarships to 4-H Club members as well as youths with hands-on training in Japan. Mr Dar also mentions that the DA's Agriculture Competitiveness Enhancement Fund, ACEF, provides each student P73,000 under its Grant-in-Aid in Higher Education Program. 

I believe the youth who will be attracted by scholarships to the State Colleges & Universities, SCUs (image from The Philippine Catalog), are those with criticalminds who will make good aggie staff here or abroad after graduation.

Another option for young critical minds – Let them study how to make money based on existing models of business setups: micro, small, or medium. Mr Dar also mentions the Philippine Society of Agricultural & Biosystems Engineers, PSABE, who subscribe to "technologizing agriculture."

Now, accepting that the ATI, ACEF and PSABE solutions are all well-considered, I will make a paradigm shift and propose something else for the youth to be doubly excited to enroll in any of our SCUs:

Calling for their creative geniuses.

After selection and with free tuition, in one way inspire the youth, male and female, in a 2-year think-up course, to look for a key in the process of examining any existing good or service where it can be improved or novelized. In another way, inspire the youth to think up system solutions to problems in agriculture – or innovative products and services. Either way, that will certainly make agriculture exciting for the youth, not to mention the rest of us. They will flood agriculture with novel ideas.

In the word cloud image forming a key above (from Alamy stock photo), you will find the words ideal, way, find, feel, know, look, make great, question, need, care … we are looking for how to inspire creative minds to wander about and come up with one or two ideas that can become products or services. Think of thousands of young minds thinking entirely new things for old PH Agriculture, and they will be all excited!

And we will all be rewarded with new, vibrant, expert-producing if not export-generating new technologies and systems that will truly enrich PH Agriculture – and the Filipino people, especially the farmers and fishers.

Mr Dar, of course, is coming from his "Eight Paradigms" in his "New Thinking for Agriculture," and these are: (1) Modernizing agriculture. (2) Industrializing agriculture; (3) Promoting exports; (4) Consolidating the farms; (5) Developing roadmaps; (6) Building infrastructure; (7) Having higher budgets and investments for agriculture; and (8) Having legislative support. The youth are indispensable in the first 3 paradigms.

Cover shown in the lower image above, do not forget that my ebook Paradigms Lost, Paradigms Regainedinforms literally & literarily on the 8 Paradigms Mr Dar is propagating throughout the country to make farmers & fishers rich. Yours for free, by email, on/before 17 September 2019; after that, it's US$17/P900/copy. frankahilario@gmail.com.@517