Agri consultant wants proper budget consultations

With farm­ing in­tern­ships ex­pect­ed to triple from 30 to 100 par­tic­i­pants, of­fer­ing more young peo­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter agri­cul­ture and busi­ness, agri­cul­tur­al con­sul­tant Riyadh Mo­hammed says the coun­try’s abil­i­ty to turn its agri­cul­tur­al in­vest­ment in­to tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits will de­pend on how ef­fec­tive­ly poli­cies are im­ple­ment­ed.

In an analy­sis of the 2026–2027 agri­cul­tur­al bud­get, Mo­hammed, Lead Agri­cul­ture and Busi­ness Con­sul­tant at Trop­i­cal Agri­cul­ture Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices, said the ex­pan­sion of the in­tern­ship pro­gramme was en­cour­ag­ing, but young peo­ple need­ed more than ex­po­sure to farm­ing to build sus­tain­able ca­reers in the sec­tor.

He said par­tic­i­pants should re­ceive struc­tured place­ments, prac­ti­cal train­ing and men­tor­ship across agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion, pro­cess­ing, re­search, tech­nol­o­gy and dis­tri­b­u­tion, with clear path­ways in­to em­ploy­ment or busi­ness own­er­ship.