The Department of Agriculture (DA) has issued three (3) Memorandum Circulars last December 2024 regarding guidelines in the implementation of the Young Farmers Challenge (YFC) that will continue this 2025 and will focus on expanding the YFC competition to the inter-collegiate level, the continued assistance to previous YFC awardees for the scaling-up of their agribusinesses initially started under the YFC, and the start-up for competitive financial grant assistance.

Under Memorandum Circular 51 series of 2024, the Department of Agriculture is expanding the coverage of the YFC program through an intercollegiate Category.

This will be participated by students of agriculture and other courses in State Universities and Colleges (SUCs) and Local Universities and Colleges (LUCs) accredited by the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), with the objective of the program to help transform the ideas of the students into profitable agribusiness ventures, through a region-wide intercollegiate Business Model Canvas (BMC) competition of selected students taking up agriculture and other related courses.

Memorandum Circular No.50, series of 2024 or the Implementing guidelines for the YFC upscale will continue to support previous awardees in their initially started agribusiness to improve and upscale the operation of their existing agri-fishery enterprise by providing them additional capital in the form of competitive financial grant assistance, including upgrading equipment/assets, creating new product lines, improving marketing efforts, as well as permits and licenses, among others.