Shillong, May 12 : Meghalaya Governor R S
Mooshahary today said a policy change is needed to make
agriculture a vocational choice for the educated youth.
"The current mindset that agriculture is the vocation
of uneducated rural youth with no skill has to be changed by
our affirmative action to make it a vocation of dignity and
respect," he said at the Indian Centre for Agricultural
Research (ICAR) complex at Umiam, near here.
He emphasised on the need to set up farm schools in
villages to provide hands-on experience in farming to youths.
According to the Governor, agriculture must be in a
position to attract young men and women with good education to
take it as a vocation of choice and not a choiceless
livelihood option where despair and poverty force people to
kill themselves.
Mooshahary suggested a policy change which could
inculcate farming spirit in our young men and women in
educational institutions.
"Many of them have not even seen any food crop of
livestock husbandry and they are not sensitive to the farmer's
plight. So the students in educational institutions from the
level of high school to university should be given lessons in
farming by introducing a basic agricultural syllabus," he
said.
Mooshahary said setting up of farm schools would help
the youths learn the techniques of farming at an early age
which would also encourage them to be new generation farmers
and stop their migration to urban areas.