According to National Youth Policy, not much has been done to make agriculture attractive to the youth. It emphasised that the promotion of the participation of youth in modern agriculture is a viable career opportunity which will reduce unemployment and overdependence.

In view of this, government through the Ministry of Food and Agriculture partnered the Israeli Embassy to organise the Greenhouse Capacity Building annually.

Rendy Abbam, a 25-year-old with a Bachelor’s Degree in Agriculture from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, is a beneficiary. The training landed her the job with Agri-Sustainable Ghana.

“With the skills acquired from the greenhouse training, I joined Agri-Sustainable Ghana as a farmhand. With time, I rose to become the Farm Administrator and currently the Marketing Manager for Agri-Sustainable Ghana,” she shared.

Agriculture is not exactly the course a teenage girl would like to study during their high school days. Although Rendy disclosed that she was coerced to do so, she has fallen in love with the sector overtime.

“The mere thoughts of feeding humans, the mere thought that we eat every day is what motivated me to go into farming,” she said.

As a greenhouse producer, Rendy shares that “for tomatoes, after 21 days in the nursery, the seedlings are transplanted into the tunnel. We use the coco peats growing medium and drip irrigation. We use the trellis to ensure the plant doesn’t creep on the ground. Because this is not in the open field, we have to induce the fruits. We do this by cross pollination and spraying hormones on the flowers.”

“There are branches that develop from every node of the plant which sucks the nutrients and prevents it from fruiting properly. Our customers expect a level of quality and size, hence we break off those excess branches. At eight weeks, we experience our colour break which means our plant is getting ready for harvest.”

Rendy is the reigning Miss Agriculture Ghana. Her passion for the sector is exceptional. This could be the narrative about many more youth provided they are nudged in the direction of agriculture with all the necessities.