BRIEF OF SUBMITTED SOLUTION

One of the problems in my community, which is a farming community, is disease and pests ravaging crops and solely depending on rain-fed agriculture, adverse weather conditions and post-harvest loss. This has affected their yield of production and quality of product and the shelf life of the product. The farmers use pesticide to fight against pests and disease which is detrimental to human health. I am an Agribusiness specialist and an entrepreneur. I venture into the Greenhouse farming of vegetables. I have been able to increase yield, make efficient use of resources like water and nutrients, good shelf life and quality vegetables. In the greenhouse, there is control over the environment as compared to open field production with its challenges. With my experience, I have provided them with an improvised way since the greenhouse farm is expensive to build. They use bamboo and a net to protect the plants against pests and disease, which has helped in reducing the use of pesticides. The issue with post-harvest losses, during harvesting I go to the farms with vans to buy their vegetables and sell them in addition to my greenhouse vegetables with branding and packaging. This helps easy access to the market as an aggregator to reduce the
wastage of the vegetable, which is highly perishable, and will go bad when delayed on the farm. I also offer technical assistance to the farmers to ensure optimum production. I offer Internship and National service to the youth, to train them in Entrepreneurship. This training helps them not to rely on white colour jobs but to establish their own business. This project has helped solve the issue of unemployment among the youth and also the bad misconceptions they have about Agriculture.