Start from an education point of view

Jasmine Holness - deputy director of research, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands

"ANY RESEARCHER requires an enquiring mind. To what level does our institutions encourage enquiry? It begins - not necessarily at the primary level - but definitely at the level where a high school student begins to develop an interest in a career path, in a what you would call a vocation because the idea of coming out and working for somebody is not necessarily the way that one goes these days.

So we need to look at it as a vocation and we have to think of delivering agriculture and agricultural knowledge in such a way that it develops an interest, a child develops an interest in it, just as how he wants to become a lawyer (or) a doctor.

AGRICULTURE IN SCHOOLS

We now have to look at the delivery of agricultural education from the high school level. When I look for instance in one of the newspapers (that) has the CXC curriculum and whatever it is they put out and what I see, the questions being asked, the responses or what is being taught by these persons who are supposed to be the resource persons, I wonder if I learnt the same agriculture as they did.

The fundamental thing is that it has to start from an education point of view, both on a social level as well as an educational level, that agriculture must be seen as a good option for vocation."

Research necessary for development

Balteano Duffus - agribusiness consultant

"THE MORE relevant issues to me are the institutional capacity of the existing institutions to deliver and the relevance of the existing curriculum.

Liberalisation and globalisation have been accompanied by increasingly more intense competition driven by even more stringent and more demanding customers, rapidly changing technology. Therefore, to compete effectively in such an environment requires greater efficiency, more responsiveness to customers and the adoption of new technologies more rapidly.

MAJOR CHALLENGES

Two of the major challenges facing the Jamaican educational institutions responsible for providing agricultural education are their research capabilities, and the level of literacy and the numeracy scale of the large base of farmers that we have because it is no use developing curricula and the people to which you would get to eventually are not in a position to accept.

Also, there is the issue of the communication between what we previously called extension officers and farmers in that extension officers would go into the farm and they would try to tell the farmers what they have learned at these various institutions. But in many cases research has shown that given local conditions, there are things that the farmers know that could be of assistance to the extension officers which could be incorporated into the knowledge base and disseminated more widely.

Also indigenous research ought to be done for the basis of development. Now, my question is, how much research is being done and what has been the contribution of the University of the West Indies because in the world that we are today, for example, countries are using different methods of keeping out goods from their borders. For example, the whole question of traceability and farmers competence, we have got to look at the competence of our farmers in the context of the people with whom we compete and more often than not farmers like, for example, in Europe have to present certificates which show their competency.

"Non-formal education is just as important"

Dr. Francis Aseidu - country representative, Caribbean Agricultural Development and Research Institute (CARDI)

"I THINK where we seem to be having a great problem is what happens after that education and perhaps many of us who have come through the agricultural educational system will agree with me, that agriculture perhaps is the only discipline that spans several faculties in any university.

You go from life sciences through humanities, through economics, through almost all the departments in every university. As a discipline, it prepares individuals for life. Now, I think what is happening is how we apply the knowledge and the skills that we have acquired. As the PS (permanent secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Lands) said agriculture is a business and that's where we should be looking towards.

PLACING EMPHASIS

So far, I think we have spent quite a time on the formal agricultural educational system. Mr. Shand alluded to the other side which is the non-formal because of obviously his agency. I think non-formal agricultural education is of equal importance as the formal educational courses that take place in the tertiary and secondary schools and for the non-formal education, the emphasis obviously is on the recipients or the farmers. Technology transfer is one of the things that perhaps we should embrace and strengthen. In this respect, CARDI, as one of its mandates is to generate and provide the extension and dissemination of the various technologies to the farming community.