08 July 2019

Half News – PH Needs More Youth Entrepreneurs, Yentrepreneurs


This is a teacher speaking – so you have been warned. 

In this modern Digital Age, I have just noticed that our PH newspapers are still practicing ancient journalism. Wake up, media-people!

Facebook link shared by ER, I am reading the article by ABC, "Farm Advocate Expects More Youth Becoming Agripreneurs" (07 July 2019, xyz.com.ph).

CJ tells ABC:

Most important, the connection of people… land and agriculture should start at a young age. Integrating agriculture appreciation and experience, in elementary and secondary education, would be a step to engage more young people (with) farming.

That is, start them young. I say, not a bad idea.

CJ also says:

Yes, technology would be of great help to engage the younger generation in agriculture. However, it should not be (at) the extent of devaluing the best resource the sector has: Human resources or our farmers. Technology should be a tool to advance agriculture and not replace the human resources/farmers in the field.

CJ is talking about mechanization replacing manual labor in the farm.

She also says:

We need (a) fresher world view that agriculture is the game-changer; agriculture is extraordinary. Here, communicating agriculture in a positive way is the key.

(I hope this essay is communicating agriculture in a positive way.)

CJ says "The Garden Classroom" of AGREA Agricultural Systems International headed by Cherrie D Atilano is "one great program." I looked into agreaph.com, and no, AGREA is not engaged with youth entrepreneurship, only with youth and their school gardens.

While the title of ABC's XYZ article has the words "youth becoming agripreneurs," the content has nothing about "The How," only about "The Wish" to be aggie entrepreneurs. This is what I call half news – they are writing newspaper articles like they used to!

Anyway, since ABC and CJ started it, let's talk youth entrepreneurship, my yentrepreneurship. The image here of "How to find the right business idea in the Philippines" comes from FilipiKnow(filipiknow.net). Let's see how we Filipinos are training the youth to become successful farmers where their elders are now failing – after years of farming with patience, our farmers have hardly risen above the poverty line.

Aye, there's the rub!

I have been writing about entrepreneurship since at least 12 years ago; here are 2 essays of mine written 12 years apart:

"Entrepreneur On A Bicycle. John Gokongwei Jr Was Having Twice The Fun" (31 October 2007, Frank A Hilario, frankahilario.blogspot.com).

"Advantage Rice Farmer – With SRI, Lower Costs & Higher Returns" (20 May 2019, Journalism for Development, ijournalismfordevelopment.blogspot.com).

The title of the latter essay inadvertently yet half-defines what is entrepreneurship: lower costs & higher returns. Too many, if not all, of farmers have higher costs and lower returns!

So, if we want to have yentrepreneurship, first we have to teach the old farmers entrepreneurship – then I'm sure we don't have to push the youth into yentrepreneurship, as they will know which side of one's bread is buttered!

Or, directly in or out of the classroom, we teach the youth now their yentrepreneurship so that they can teach their parents!517

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