Empowering rural youth and women through agribusiness innovation, research, evaluation, and policy influence.
Empowering rural youth and women through agribusiness innovation, research, evaluation, and policy influence.
Revitalizing agribusiness among youth
Agribusiness, which is a shift from food-security oriented farming to market, profit, and technology-driven farming as a business has a huge potential to provide self-employment opportunities, income generation, and secure the livelihoods of rural youth. However, youth do not find agriculture attractive – or rather, “sexy”! Furthermore, they face a myriad of challenges in their quest to venturing into agribusiness such as lack of access to adequate farmland due to socio-ciltural practices, lack of access to finance, markets, and technology. Our initiatives to revitalize agribusiness among youth and make it woork for them include:
Affordable greenhouse vegetable and fruits farming as a business
We are currently piloting an initiative in Suba Sub-County in which we organize rural-based youth into groups of about 10 members and support them materially and technically to construct affordable greenhouses for vegetable and fruit production as a business. We further provide them with agribusiness, entrepreneurial, and group management skills training besides technical training in greenhouse vegetables and fruits farming. We help them establish commercial villages, farmers associations, and village farmers table banks to facilitate collective action on access to finance, markets, and technlogies.
Motivational Agri-Talk forums with secondary school students
We have been organizing motivational Agri-Talk forums with students taking agriculture as an elective subject in secondary schools in south-western Kenya. During these Agri-Talk forums, we share with the students the concept of farming as a business for employmet creation, income generation, and food security. We further expose them to entrepreneurial opportunities within the entire spectrum of agriculture value and supply chains. We also share with them success stories of youth agripreneurs in Kenya and Africa. Through this initiative, we hope not only to encourage them to put into practice the agriculture knowledge and schools they learn in school but also to inspire tem to be catalysts of local economic development though agribusiness and other off-farme support businesses.
Agribusiness development services
We provide affordable business development services to that include:
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Agribusiness plan development.
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Market surveys for agricultural produce.
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Agricultural technology assessments.
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Demand-driven broad-based extension service.
Sponsor a greenhouse !
Even though challenges youth face such as access to markets and technology can be easily addressed though contractual farmin, market linkages, and training, access to agribusiness start-up finance is a major hurdel to rural youth annd women. A unit of affordable greenhouse costs USD 200 to construct (Bare minimum cost). With USD 200, you can economically empower a rural youth through greenhouse horticultural farming agribusiness. We welcome sponsorships and support in cash or kind in the form of capacity building, greenhouse construction materials, farm inputs and assets e.g. water tanks. Contact us at the email address stepup@workmail.com for sponsorship enquiries.
we have BIG future plans!
We have just begun! In the near future, we plan to work with these youth as success stories to attract more youth to agribusiness and expand production with the goal of investing in value addition through processing and venturing into the export market. Our agenda is to revolutionalize and transform traditional subsistence farming into viable and sustainable agribusinesses with the youth taking the lead, Food is expensive globally, and youth can seize this opportunity to create employment for themselves and others, earn decent income, and secure their livelihoods.
