News form MARDI: FFTC International Seminar- Cultivating Young Generation of Farmers 2015

2015.10.12

By: Nur Aida Mohd Padzil, Corporate Communication, International and Quality Division, MARDI 
Scientia MARDI - Vol. 006 - September 2015

The International Seminar on Cultivating Young Generation of Farmers with armland Policy Implication was successfully held in MARDI Serdang from May 26 – 28, 2015. MARDI, as part of the technical member of Food and Fertilizer Technology Centre (FFTC), was given the honour to co-organise and co-sponsor this seminar.

Ten countries from the Asia Pasific Region participated in this seminar, namely, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philipines, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam with a total of 14 participants.

The main objective of the seminar was to determine a better way for the government to prepare appropriate policies for young beginners to purchase or rent farmlands and for existing young farmers to increase their farmland scale.

The seminar was also a good platform to provide opportunities for the participants to share and exchange relevant information and knowledge necessary to formulate appropriate agricultural related policies applicable to every country and to the region.

The organisation of this seminar was timely since the aging problem among agricultural farmers is serious in this region which hampered farmers’ efforts in finding successors for their farming business.

Among the topics discussed were:

• Farmland policy for young generation: purchasing and leasing;
• Farmland bank programme for young generation; 
• Farmland scale-up policy for young generation; 
• Direct payment programme for young generation to get appropriate farmland and; 
• Farmland pension programme.

The programmes for the 3-day event consisted of 2 days seminar and 1 day technical visit. Visits were organised to the Herbs Garden at MAEPS, KMS Agronomy Sdn. Bhd. (young agricultural entrepreneur coached by MARDI), a rockmelon fertigation farm and finally the Malaysian Tourism Centre (MaTiC) and KL sightseeing.

Concurrent with this International seminar, a local seminar, “Memupuk Generasi Muda Usahawantani 2015” was also held on May 26, 2015 with 200 young local agropreneurs as participants.

The main target was to expose young agropreneurs with the latest agricultural related technologies that can be used to benefit them. In addition, the seminar gave them an understanding on the current issues related to agricultural sector such as farmland issues, capital needs and also government initiatives besides improving their networking with the industrial players.

Some of the agroprenuers took the opportunity to promote their products at the exhibition designated areas during the seminar. Both local and international seminars were officially opened by the Deputy Secretary General for Policy, YBhg. Dato’ Azizan bin Mohamad Sidin from the Ministry of Agriculture & Agro-based Industry.

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