Magalang, Pampanga—The Department of Agriculture called on over 600,000 millennial graduates of agricultural courses to engage in agribusiness with ready and available loans from the government totalling P2 billion.
Agriculture Secretary William Dar made the call during the recent 5th Founding Anniversary of Pampanga State Agricultural University here, revealing a project called Kapital Access for Young Agripreneurs and the AgriNegosyo loan program under the DA’s Agricultural Credit Policy Council.
Each program has a budget of P1 billion each, Dar said. The agricultural projects aim to entice millennials to return to farming and start agriculture businesses to increase the country’s productivity and boost the government’s food security program.
Based on DA’s records on Higher Education Institutions, about 603,000 students have graduated with degrees in agriculture, forestry, fisheries and veterinary medicine from 2014 to 2019, excluding those who took short courses in the same field covering the same period.
“I am so excited to see the millennials go into agricultural business,” Dar stressed.
The DA statistics show millennial holders of agriculture courses are reluctant to enter into farming because of the experience of their parents, who remain old and poor after several years of toiling on an average of 2.5 hectares of land.
Millennials, or the so-called Generation Y born from 1980 up to year 2000, are teenagers and twentysomethings and now part of the working force. In the Philippines, they are “social media dependent and selfie generation,” Dar noted.
In contrast, the country has a total of 11 million farmers and fishermen with ages between 60 to 78 years old, the same report shows.
Owing to a lack of farmers and fishermen, the food security for 110 million Filipinos “is now in serious danger,” the secretary said.
Under the program, Dar explained that borrowers of KAYA can obtain loans of up to P500,000 per person, payable within five years with no interest rate.
The KAYA loan program was launched to give young agripreneurs the avenue to engage in an agri-based projects by offering them loans as working capital and fixed asset acquisition as requirements for the start up or existing business, said Emmalyn Guinto, communication and public affairs officer of ACPC.
The AgriNegosyo loan program is open to all micro- or small-business enterprises, which can avail of loans up to P15 million for working capital.
This amount is available to sole proprietors, partnership, corporations, associations, and cooperatives who are planning to start up or expand their business ventures.
The DA’s requirements for the loans are the submission of business plan, government issued ID, and a loan application form to a partner lending conduit.
Loans extended by the ACPC to farmers and fisherfolk will pass through government and non-government financial institutions, who will act as lending conduit to manage the credit program, disburse credit funds, and to monitor and collect loans from borrowers.
To assure the success of the projects, the department teams up with state universities and colleges, government agencies, and non-government service providers to mentor and assist young entrepreneurs in handling their business.
Formerly called the Pampanga Agricultural College, the PSAU and its 500-hectare campus was converted into a state university in 2017.
PAC was formerly located in San Isidro, Nueva Ecija but was transferred to Magalang at the foothills of Mt. Arayat in March 20, 1985 due to “insufficient and poor conditions” of the land in the neighboring province.