Attracting the Youth into Agriculture
Attracting the Youth into Agriculture
The final session of Nation in Conversation, filmed on the last day of the Nampo Harvest Day in Bothaville ended off with a lively discussion on Youth: Career Opportunities and How to Attract New Entrants to the Agricultural Sector. The session was hosted by Mpumelelo Mkhabela and the panellists included GrainSA’s Jannie de Villiers, AgriSA’s Omri van Zyl, Afgri’s Prudence Motseo, Monsanto’s Kobus Steenekamp, Johan Hudson from Nedbank, Antois van der Westhuizen from John Deere and Flint Meintjies from Senwes.
Attracting the Youth into Agriculture
The final session of Nation in Conversation, filmed on the last day of the Nampo Harvest Day in Bothaville ended off with a lively discussion on Youth: Career Opportunities and How to Attract New Entrants to the Agricultural Sector. The session was hosted by Mpumelelo Mkhabela and the panellists included GrainSA’s Jannie de Villiers, AgriSA’s Omri van Zyl, Afgri’s Prudence Motseo, Monsanto’s Kobus Steenekamp, Johan Hudson from Nedbank, Antois van der Westhuizen from John Deere and Flint Meintjies from Senwes.
Mpumelelo started off the session by welcoming a packed audience of invited learners and students from various schools and universities in the area representing all walks of life and racial backgrounds.
The panellists espoused the various job opportunities in the agricultural value chain and the consensus was that students needed to be very clear about what they wanted to do when applying for particular positions in agriculture.
Everyone agreed that the only thing that was needed to succeed in a career in agriculture was a real passion for agriculture and a hard work ethic, no matter what area of the value chain you slot into.
Because of the sophistication and technological advances in agriculture, job opportunities ranged from input supply, soil works, IT, finance, bio-technology, economics, engineering, science, marketing, even journalism and lots more.
Many of the company’s offered internships and bursaries, and students were advised to do their homework when applying for positions. “Read up on the company’s values and ethics as well as their operational activities,” was the ongoing refrain among panellists.
The session was concluded in two segments with lots of interaction from the audience.
The series celebrates its fourth year being broadcast from Nampo and has seen the conversation on the importance of agriculture being widely spread via various mainstream media outlets such as KykNet, 702/Cape Talk, Soweto TV, Business Day TV and many others. The series is also available via YouTube. Download the Nation in Conversation App at www.nasieingesprek.co.za to join the conversation and to access the full broadcast channel where you can watch this entire episode.
