THE DEPARTMENT of Agriculture (DA)-Davao has incentivized greater youth participation in farming through competitive grants.
Dr. Melinda Rubellano, regional focal for Young Farmers Challenge Program of DA-Davao, underscored the importance of competitions in igniting the youth to share their ideas and innovations about farming.
“The Young Farmers Challenge Program is an initiative of DA to encourage the youth to engage in profitable agri-fishery enterprise. We are looking into the youth members who are unemployed and those young professionals who have not yet started a career in mainstream industries, and provide them with income-generating enterprises,” she said during the Agribiz Media Forum on December 20.
Rubellano said the program has three levels: provincial, regional, and national.
“One of the objectives of the program is to provide funds to the grantees as start-up capital of their proposed enterprises through the presentation of their business model canvas,” she said.
As the enterprises are being implemented, Rubellano said grantees are given business development assistance through training and mentoring.
For each level of the competition, winners of the provincial level are given P50,000 pesos each. Regional winners are given P150,000 and national winners are granted P200,000 each.
Out of the 120 qualifiers nationwide, 35 of them are from Davao region.
Twelve finalists were chosen to represent their respective regions who are vying for the title as national winners.
The categories for the competitive grants include production, processing, digital agriculture, and business system solutions.
“If you become a national winner, DA will give you another P300,000. Individual winners receive a total of P500,000 and group winners are granted P550,000,” Rubellano said.
Anyone can join the competition regardless of marital status as long as individuals are 18 to 30 years old and are not relatives of DA (and its attached bureaus) employees to the third-degree consanguinity. JDC