Photo: Wikimedia Commons: Portal da Copa
To qualify, you have to be between the ages of 18 and 25 and applicants have until the end of today (10 January 2019) to submit an application to the organisers via youthagsummit.com.
Since its inception in 2013, a total of 300 delegates from almost 50 countries have taken part in the summit.
This event gives young people between the ages of 18 and 25 the opportunity to join the next generation of agricultural change-makers that will provide solutions to one of the greatest challenges facing the world today: how to feed a hungry planet.
Previous summits were hosted in Canada, Australia and Belgium, and Bayer will be collaborating with Nuffield Brazil and AIESEC Brazil to host the 2019 summit.
“In just five years, the Youth Ag Summit has become a powerful force for change, empowering over 300 highly talented alumni to make an impact on the world,” Rodrigo Santos, head of Bayer’s Crop Science division in Latin America, said in a statement.
“We believe leadership is the fundamental solution to changing the world. We need to inspire and enable young people to become active leaders for food security and sustainable agriculture,” Jonathan Volpato, head of business development at AIESEC in Brazil said in the statement.
READ Agri park empowers youth through veggie farming project
Lisa Rothmann, a lecturer in plant pathology at the University of the Free State, who is currently completing her PhD thesis titled ‘Modelling intervention thresholds for selected disease of sorghum, soybean and sunflower’, was one of the delegates to attend the first Youth Ag Summit in Canada in 2013.
Speaking to Farmer’s Weekly Rothmann said the summit was a life-changing experience and played a key role in inspiring her to pursue a career in agriculture.
“The summit gives delegates a wide exposure to all the different aspects of agriculture. There are so many parts of agriculture that most people are not even aware of, and at the summit you are exposed to a wide variety of disciplines and topics related to the sector and food production in general, from the legal disciplines to climate change and food wastage.”
READ Focus on creating work, not jobs
According to Rothmann, in many parts of the world youth people did not view agriculture as an appealing career prospect. However, exposing them to the wide diversity of opportunities that the sector provides it would be possible to change this perception.
“We need to get young people involved in agriculture now. They have to be mentored by those who currently hold the knowledge, otherwise we will end up with a generational knowledge gap in one of the most important sectors, at a time when the world can least afford it,” she said.
For updates on the conference follow @YouthAgSummit on Twitter.
