Taichung's Youth Agricultural Training Program Trains New Blood for Rural Areas, Nearly 90% Stay in Agriculture

Last year, the Taichung City Government began promoting the "Youth in Agriculture - Mentor Inheritance" program, through which diverse courses are offered and outstanding mentors are selected to teach young farmers the essentials of production, packaging, marketing, and even after-sales service for direct sales, encouraging young people to return to their hometowns to farm, injecting new blood into rural areas, and improving problems such as the aging agricultural population and excessively low agricultural incomes. The first Youth in Agriculture program trained a total of 46 trainees, and after completing the training, nearly 90% remained working in the agricultural field, yielding fruitful results.

After taking office, Taichung Mayor Lin Chia-lung promoted the "Youth in Agriculture - Mentor Inheritance" program, which not only provides a monthly living allowance of 30,000 yuan for one year so that trainees can learn agriculture-related knowledge with peace of mind, but also asks various agricultural groups and agricultural colleges to help recommend agricultural industry experts from each district, establishing an agricultural mentor inheritance coaching team so that trainees can learn from mentors according to their learning preferences and inherit professional cultivation skills.

The first Youth in Agriculture program trained a total of 46 trainees, who studied under 17 mentors, and completed training on July 1 this year. After completion, 41 were confirmed to be engaged in farming, with a retention rate in agriculture of 89.1%; and this July, the Youth in Agriculture program entered its second session, training a total of 37 young farmers and hiring 21 mentors to teach agriculture-related knowledge. At present, the trainees' learning conditions are all good.

In order to attract more young people to enter agriculture, the Agriculture Bureau also planned and produced an 11-episode series called "Transforming Agriculture - Here Come the Young Farmers," presenting the life stories of young people who, after joining the "Youth in Agriculture - Mentor Inheritance" program, started their entrepreneurial journeys and transformed agriculture, hoping to call on more young people to devote themselves to Taiwan, China's agriculture and cultivate the land in Taichung.

The "Here Come the Young Farmers" program has been broadcast every Saturday at 6 p.m. on TVBS Channel 56 since October 29, and everyone is invited to watch this true agricultural story together and experience the results of young farmers' entrepreneurship and harvests.