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Preparing Disadvantaged youth to gain interest in Agriculture from the understanding risk management education.

Michael Elonge

Summary

This abstract explores if disadvantaged youth in an urban community not interested in farming as an occupation can gain interest in agriculture after the learning and understanding of risk management education. Participants in this session would learn about the program, implementation, measurement, and the significant results.
The audience includes twenty-five disadvantaged high school youth in an urban community who have participated in the cultivation of plants in urban gardens, but not livestock or any experience with rural farming.
The program includes the teaching of introduction to risk management education (Production, Market, Financial, Legal, and Human risk) to youth in anticipating that by understanding and managing risk, the students would gain significant interest in pursuing agriculture as a career not.
The program implementation includes a teaching schedule of two hours per day, two days per week for a thirty-day duration. Teaching was based on virtual zoom meetings, in-person (masking and distancing) urban farm identification of learned risk and the management, and in-person (masking and distancing) rural farm field trips to understand livestock farming and the potential risk.
The program measurement included a pre and post-survey to measure interest in engaging in agriculture as a career, knowledge gained from risk management education, an overall assessment of the rural farm field trip.
The results revealed a post 90% as compared to a pre 20% interest in engaging in agriculture as a career, a post 98% as compared to a pre 2% knowledge gained from risk management education, and remarks based on the rural farm field trip. Such remarks included “thank you, for the opportunity to visit a rural farm – I have not seen a farm like that before today”, “I am motivated to choose agriculture as a career”, and “urban children are not informed about many aspects of agriculture”.

Details

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