Linking Rural Youth to Entrepreneurship
- Agriculture needs to be technologically advanced and further supported by food processing and value addition activities to exploit its full potential Rural youth entrepreneurs are vital as they can
reallocate resources from the agricultural sector to the processing sector through knowledge, skills and food processing technology. Consequently, they may find their interests and talents are best aligned
with agribusiness value chain and food processing rather than traditional agriculture and farming. The need is to engage rural youth by creating an
eco-system and effective entrepreneurial policy framework for promoting entrepreneurship in food processing and value addition.
The Village Adoption Programme (VAP) is a unique program designed by National Institute of Food Technology Entrepreneurshipand Management
an institute under the Ministry of Food Processing Industry, Govt. of India) to empower rural youth and promote entrepreneurship in food processing. Each VAP team consisting of unique combination of 10-15 students from different programmes such as BTech
(Food Technology Management), MTech (in five food related disciplines) and MBA (with mandatory specialization in food & agribusiness management) including a faculty, who adopt a village and identify
and nurture entrepreneurial potential among rura youth. Although, the VAP has several pillars but promotion of entrepreneurship in food processing
and value addition is a major focused area. The framework that VAP team follows is consisting of following important steps and activities.
