The youth must take advantage of backyard farming to enter into agriculture and create their own agribusiness, Member of Parliament for Klotey Korle Constituency, Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, has said.

She said snail rearing, mushroom farming and rabbit keeping did not require huge tract of land to start a business venture from them.

Dr Zanetor disclosed this during the closing ceremony of the National Agricultural Capacity Building and Business Set-up Roadshow (NAGRICA) which started on Friday and ended last Saturday.

She said the youth must discard the perception that agriculture required huge tract of land to engage in.

“This is the reason why we started with the snail, rabbit and mushroom train under NAGRICA training to drum home the point that one does not need a large tract of land to engage in agriculture,” she said.

Tagged “It is Possible,” the programme is an initiative of Dr Zanetor Agyeman-Rawlings, and implemented by Agrihouse Foundation, a non-governmental organisation with focus on agri-business and agriculture.

Under the three-day programme, about 150 youth from Greater Accra were trained in snail, rabbit and mushroom cultivation.

After the training, each beneficiary was presented with a certificate and a starter-pack to help them start their business in the three areas of training.

Dr Agyemang-Rawlings, the lead of implementer of NAGRICA, said the programme was meant to economically empower the youth and provide them with jobs to become financially independent.

She said she conceived the idea of supporting the youth to enter agriculture and agri-business seven years ago.

According to her agriculture and agri-business could be a tool to create jobs for the youth and address the unemployment challenge facing the country.

Dr Agyeman-Rawlings urged the participants “to make most out of the training,” disclosing that an application was being developed to help participants share information about the programme.

She said post-harvest losses remained a problem and arrangement had been made for the products to be produced from the programme to be bought by off takers, so marketing did not become a problem to the beneficiaries.

Dr Agyeman-Rawlings expressed gratitude to all the partners who supported the programme to succeed.

The Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation, Albert Nana Akyaa Akosa, said the training had been successful and the active participation of the beneficiaries was encouraging.

She said the participants were taken through topics such as how to develop business plan, sourcing for finance, farming management, and value addition.

The Executive Director of Agrihouse Foundation disclosed that co-operatives had been formed for the three agri-business areas, namely, snail and rabbit and mushroom.

Ms Akosa that the next region to benefit from the programme was North East Region.