– PYAC identifies four key challenges faced by women and youth in the field

IN a well-prepared, coordinated and researched effort, the President’s Youth Advisory Council (PYAC) did justice to its assignment of assisting officials in the country’s agricultural sector to better understand the challenges that plague women and youth and that restrict them from achieving their full potential in the field.

Vice Chair for the PYAC’s Agriculture Sub-Committee Maria Fraser took the lead to organise the group’s participation at the Ministry of Agriculture’s ‘Women and Youth Symposium’ that was held at Tain Campus, Berbice, in conjunction with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), and the Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture (IICA).

Organised as part of celebrations for ‘Agri Month 2022’ with the aim of promoting and reigniting the love for farming in the country, the authorities were brought up to speed by the PYAC, through an interactive session, on four key issues that are affecting women and youth in agriculture.

Since its establishment last August 8, the PYAC has been researching and developing ideas in several areas, some having to do with agriculture, mental health and primary healthcare, education, and constitutional reform.
“The Ministry of Agriculture, through the Director General decided the best representation to say what challenges youths may face is the President’s Youth Advisory Council since we’ve been exploring how to get youths into agriculture,” Coordinator of PYAC Nalinie Singh explained about the event, held on October 14.

Co-chair of PYAC Tracy Shamsudeen shared: “We are trying to draw youths to agriculture to get them more informed about not just traditional but innovative methods and to use technology and new equipment to develop our agriculture sector.”

During their interactive presentation, which was made both fun and interesting, the PYAC members were able to shed light on their findings obtained through consultations. “Our members from the Agriculture Committee are involved in farming. We all listed the challenges we encountered in the sector and then grouped them into four fitted categories,” Fraser told Pepperpot Magazine.

“Agriculture is an important sector in Guyana and worldwide. I strongly believe that youths are the now! Their creativity and innovativeness can certainly play a huge role in contributing to our agriculture sector,” she added.
The first major challenge identified was adaptation to the use of advanced tools and innovative technology with related challenges being lack of exposure to technology, availability of new technologies, advanced equipment and tools, capital intensive investment, and unwillingness of farmers to shift away from traditional knowledge.

The second challenge, readily available access to finance, was mentioned with linked challenges like capital investment associated with purchase of land, equipment and tools, collateral to access loans, information on how to access government funding and subsidies, and high interest rates at the banks.

Further, the PYAC found that networking and capacity building opportunities, was another key problem with related challenges being community and co-operation among farmers, access to relevant scientific and statistical information, reluctance of women and youths to participate in agriculture, knowledge and business management skills, lack of agriculture incubators, and establishing workable public and private partnerships.

The fourth challenge identified was access to packaging and labelling. The associated challenges were capital-intensive investment, cost of energy to maintain quality assurance standards, visually appealing and competitive packaging, and marketability of products.

ROLLING OUT PROGRAMMES
According to Shamsudeen, mentioned earlier, the PYAC in rolling out its programmes, is not just looking to see how youths can benefit; the intention is to look at the constitution holistically and try to recommend reforms where there might be deficiencies.

In education, she said the council is trying to enhance the curriculum in literacy and numeracy where there may be a need for such revisions to raise the rates in Guyana since they’ve been found to be inequitable.
In executing their programmes, though, Shamsudeen said the PYAC ensures that it consults with policymakers to give them the vision of the country’s young people. “We collect those perspectives and share them with the policy makers; so they get information from us and we get information from them and from that we try to create policy in that direction so that we have the views from the top and from people on the streets,” she explained.

Speaking on mental health and primary healthcare initiatives, Co-chair Josh Kanhai offered that the group of diverse young people sitting on the PYAC is looking to reduce the suicide rate in Guyana as a matter of priority as it’s been an issue for a long time.

“We have already put together and presented a proposal to His Excellency and we would have gained his guidance and OK as to how to implement this project,” he disclosed, noting that the focus will first be in Region Two since that region has one of the highest suicide rates.
The council, according to him, is also looking at chronic diseases and promoting preventative medicines.