Food and Agricultural Service Development (FASDEP) in partnership with the National Enterprise Development Initiative (NEDI) have trained six young people on the usage of advance farming machines, held at Wellingara Agricultural Centre.
According to NEDI, these machines were purchased at about D20 millions aimed to empowering youth on farming and access to farming machines for agricultural purpose.
The officials said the project benefits young farmers in the Central River Region, Lower River region and West Coast Region.
The youth were trained to operate the modern farming machines in sustaining a project aimed to curb irregular migration and boost the nation socio economic advancement.
Mustapha Badjie, programme manager for NEDI said the project is meant to supporting the young farmers on farming development.
“The project is significant in lessening the labor-intensive for young farmers and enable them to cultivate vast area of land it will also help in ensuring food security, boost the employment among youth and curb irregular migration,” he said.
He added that the project benefited fourteen groups with CRR, LRR WCR, saying “FASDEP contributes 100% of the machines cost but the beneficiaries [14 communities] will refund FASDEP the other 40% financially.”
Pa Tamba Jammeh, principal agric engineer described the training as fruitful while appealed to them to use the machines carefully so as to sustain the machines for long time.
He said: “Agriculture is essential for income generation and to ensure food security for the in the society; thus use all measures to ensure these relevant machines are sustained,” he noted, adding they should also keep records for the expenses as well as the moneys generate by the machines.”
Author: Sulayman Waan