GAP years and agricultural work overseas

We haven’t run a blog responding to a visitor query for some time now, so thought we would put one we received yesterday online. The query was “Do you still offer the Gap year for students interested in farming and if so how do they apply?”

The query was obviously a response to a previous blog, “A GAP Year in Agriculture?” (see www.agribook.co.za/a-gap-year-in-agriculture/). We ourselves do the Agribook website only and are not involved in supplying products or services, the service providers in this case being Reitz Landbou Akademie and Peritum Agri Institute, and we said as much.

References to GAP years often include taking a year off overseas. My brothers both worked on farms overseas for a year before returning to South Africa to pursue careers, one as a farmer and the other in the agricultural value chain. In our reply to the visitor we referred to role players which source work opportunities overseas. (In addition to setting out various paths of study on our “Careers and employment in agriculture” pages, we also list where work can be found and list role players). MECS and Youth Discovery Programmes (YDP) are two of several a quick skim showed us.

Some people are clear about the path of work they want before they even leave school. For many others, it is a time of anxiety as they look to find their place in the world. If you are one of these, why not visit our “Careers and employment in agriculture” pages? You could also visit all the livestock, crop, inputs and other pages to get an overview of what happens in farming, as well as what is upstream and downstream. Who knows, perhaps there is a place here for you?

Photo by Danielle Rice on Unsplash