WESTERN BUREAU:
ANDREW MORALES, agri-processor and managing director of West Best Foods in Darliston, Westmoreland, says the island's agricultural educational institutions must facilitate the required shift in perception and cultural practices to make farming attractive to young people.
"Farming has big bucks and culture has been a setback to the sector," said Mr. Morales. "When we were growing up our parents were taking us away from the farm. Nobody wanted to touch the soil because it was associated with slavery."
He added: "The agricultural institutions must begin to facilitate the shift in attitudes towards farming."
Mr. Morales was speaking at a Gleaner Editors' Forum on Agriculture and Tourism in Montego Bay on Tuesday.
ECONOMIC ENTERPRISE
He said that the four major agricultural institutions in the island, namely, the College of Agriculture Science and Education (CASE), the Ebony Park HEART Academy, the Knockalva Agricultural School, and the Sidney Pagon Agricultural School, turn out hundreds of graduates who are underutilised, and that greater effort should be made to not only assist but engage them in economic enterprise through cooperatives.
"Every year we have hundreds of students graduate from agricultural institutions, and I am sure they did not go there because they did not have a choice. It must be because of the love for agriculture, so the Ministry of Agriculture should be going into these institutions to get the young, dynamic farmers and assist them," Mr. Morales commented.
