Facing Challenges

Most people assume that social media sharing is easy, but indeed it requires quite a bit of effort to do more than share every blog post on social media. 

There are tons of opportunities to promote your blog, ideas, or business on every one of the social networks, but for most people it’s not available for them to use.

Social media is like climbing mountains, you should look not only forward, but also backward. You should be careful and take care about all of your steps.

When I speak about the social media I am always reminded by one of my friends. He lives in a mountainous area, 1,700 meters above sea level without electricity, internet and even mobile network. He is farmer, and about 30-40% of his produce is wasted because he cannot reach the market. That is why he walks almost 20km to reach the destination where there is internet available and finds customers with the help of social media.

For me, if an entrepreneur does not have an active social media accounts it means missing out on numerous marketing opportunities. As it enables me to interact with my customers and promote my mushroom business.

Going through tweets and Facebook updates of my clientele base gives me an insight into what they need. This is useful for helping my company formulate marketing strategies that address their needs.

Many of the communications I have built online through Young Professionals for Agricultural Development (YPARD) platform, has given young professionals an opportunity to create, share, or exchange information, career interests etc. For example, after I took part in the Youth Agripreneurs Project (YAP). A lot of entrepreneurs from other countries wrote to me via social media. I could not imagine that there are so many young people doing the same business (Mushroom Farming) and they shared many valuable experiences with me.  And it was a great learning experience for me and I am very grateful to Global Forum of Agricultural Research (GFAR) and YPARD for this opportunity. 

This type of communications allows young professionals to realize their potential and contribute to the development of agriculture by implementing innovative methods. As a result, more and more young people are interested in this sector, and put their energy, education and experience in the field for the development of Agriculture. 

Even more important I am very keen on building links with agricultural entrepreneurs from other countries at the 43rd Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS43). I am convinced that my participation at CFS43 would be widely covered by Georgian media. This would further support the idea that in Georgia and elsewhere, food security and sustainable agriculture offers a real prospective to ambitious young people from any background. Unfortunately, there are not high standards on food security and agriculture is also less preferable sector for young people in Georgia.

Thank you the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) for partnering CFS to coordinate live social reporting from CFS43. Their focus on Agri-food research and innovation is really appreciable. It really delivers the best development outcomes to resource-poor farmers and rural communities. 

I hope that YPARD and GFAR’s  jointly work on giving more opportunities to young professionals achieves developmental change in increasing environmental resilience, in benefiting people’s lives and livelihoods or enhancing food and nutrition security.

This blog post is part of the CFS 43  YPARD social reporters' project supported by GFAR . The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.