Farmers of the Future: Empowering Unemployed Youth

That's a wrap! Because of you, after 6 months of learning, we have our first graduates from the Farmers of the Future training program for 2021 in South Africa.

6 months ago the team started with the principles of agroecology and last month they finished with a business building exercise. The past few weeks they have been busy charging through the business planning phase which allows them to share ideas, collaborate, and essentially plan for success.

Last week the first round of kickstart loan proposals were submitted!

We are excited about the hard work our participants have put in, and where this will lead! We have a proposal for a Chilli Sauce business, a market access business, an organic compost supplier, and one hydroponics business.

Kickstart loans help our graduates take a step towards disrupting the cycle of poverty.

Fund a farmer and their future by contributing towards their kickstart loan!

Over the past few months since we had our lockdown restrictions eased here in South Africa we have resumed our Farmers of the Future training programme. We were really excited that we could welcome 12 new participants into our programme ready to take on this challenge and growing their own business.

We’ve had the privilege to be able to start at two of our training properties this year. This gave us a much wider net to include participants into the programme. As we look towards next year we are gearing up to get our third training facility set up to host our ever growing group of young entrepreneurs.

Having access to more resources has also allowed us to bring in some new training material for our programme which has been very exciting. We have included a hydroponics training module, agro-processing and we are building our seed library of indigenous african vegetables. All of these new additions are to deal with the water and climate struggles in South Africa and to be able to create more long term high income sustainable businesses.

However, our most exciting news this year is that we have provided a kickstart loan to our first start-up through the programme. Be the Star Farming Project will be our debut into the start-up phase of Farmers of the Future and we cannot be more thrilled. This will be a huge learning curve and valuable experience not only for the participants but also us as Farmers of the Future. As the next three months of their project progresses we look forward to see their business grow, where we fit into the picture and how we can kick start a new growth of rural agricultural businesses!

Thank you for making this project possible! Because of you, unemployed youth have the opportunity to create a more prosperous future for themselves, their families, and their community.