SUSTAINABLE AGRICALTURAL DEVELOPMENT: IMPLICATIONS FOR AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

References

Cite

Share

Abstract

On a world-wide basis, the number of university courses in agricultural science and related disciplines such as agricultural economics and farm manangement increased dramatically in the 1950 to 1990 period. One of the most important factors influencing this development was the perceived need to enlist the assistance of modem science to solve the world food problem. That is, for the last four decades, agricultural education at the tertiary level has been primarily orientated to increasing food production. Consequently, a large proportion of the human capital (researchers) created by these educational programs has been used to address productionrelated problems. The result has been a massive increase in agricultural productivity. But these gains have not been achieved without putting great pressure on the environment. Gradually, the negative impacts of the gains in agricultural productivity (soil degradation, salivation, species extinctions, etc.) have become increa singly obvious and important. The recent growing public awareness of the need to develop sustainable production systems has given respectability to ideas which previously were dismissed by many production oriented educators and scientists as counterproductive. University programs have been slow to adjust to the new reality. While the intellectual challenges associated with "making two ears of corn grow where one grew before" inspired agricultural scientists in the mid 20th Century, the challenge for the 21st Century is how to ensure that the hard won gains of the last 40 years can be maintained and even developed further within sustainable farming systems. Two fundamental changes need to be widely implemented if mainstream tertiary agricultural eduction and research is to answer the sustainability challenge. First, undergraduate and postgraduate programs in agricultural science must provide a greater awareness of the long-term costs and benefits of technological and social change. Sustainability refers not only to physical environments but to social (and economic) environments as well. Indeed, it is the conflict between these two aspects of sustainability which creates most of the fundamental problems facing Third World agriculture today. Secondly, researchers need to be taught how to identify the real problems and to be rewarded for tackling these issues. So much agricultural research over the last 40 years has been misdirected. Most decisions about precisely what research will be undertaken are in the hands of the researchers themselves. Their concepts of "what counts" towards their own professional advancement greatly influences exactly what research is undertaken. We need to question whether the traditional personal reward struc tures for agricultural scientists are consistent with the social goal of working towards long-term sustainable agricultural systems.