John Myers Jr., Agriculture Coordinator
( L - R ) LAMEY, THOMPSON and STANBERRY
HUNDREDS OF trained agriculturists are encountering difficulty finding employment in that sector, forcing many graduates to find employment elsewhere.
Cordia Thompson, an agribusiness consultant, revealed yesterday during a Gleaner Editors' Forum on the agricultural sector that agricultural graduates from tertiary institutions, such as the College of Agriculture, Science and Education (CASE) and the University of the West Indies (UWI), could not find suitable employment. As a result, she lamented that they are forced to function in capacities outside their area of expertise or find other careers.
"We have trained plant breeders, we have trained plant nutritionists ... only to find out that the system is not prepared for you," Ms. Thompson said. "If you become a real specialist your potential for employment lies within the Ministry of Agriculture within a few posts. Eventually you get frustrated because of earning potential or promotion potential and you have to make a career change."
John Lamey, the dean of CASE, said many of the graduates from his institution are lost to foreign countries where they do their internships and, in many cases, are offered employment.
This is happening at a time when the Government has announced its intention to allocate more resources and support to the agricultural sector in its quest to grow the economy and promote rural development as outlined in the recently drafted eight-point economic plan.
Donovan Stanberry, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Land, acknowledged that the problem existed. Mr. Stanberry, who was also speaking at the forum, said: "I think we are producing, might be a good thing or bad thing, far more professionals than the official system can absorb and I think what we desperately need to do in CASE is to promote the whole means of entrepreneurship."
He said tertiary institutions such as CASE and the UWI must "not only train people to come and teach agriculture and train them to work as a plant scientists ... but turn out people who are willing to go out and be agribusinessmen because what we need is the production."
But instead, Ms. Thompson suggested that the Ministry of Agriculture and Land should liaise with the agricultural educational institutions, as well as the private sector, to find related areas where vacancies exist and train persons in those fields to alleviate the problem.
