Quality education for quality production in agriculture

Abstract

It is clear, the conventional agricultural education system is now not fulfilling the requirements of agricultural development. Education has become a focus area for policy makers so that it could bring on a fast track of skill development. The agriculture curricula should be flexible, cross-disciplinary, demand driven and yet must provide skills through hand on training and promote entrepreneurship. The course curricula must be learning-centric rather than exam centric with emphasis on self study, group studies and assignments. The SAUs and private sector must have a strong linkage between education, research and extension. Promotion of offcampus, distance and education through open learning with the help of ICTs. Formal agricultural education is one component of agricultural knowledge systems. This paper emphasised that present agricultural education systems are need of improvements in sense of its quality. Higher education faces the challenges in overcoming the stagnation in agricultural production, poor allocated resources and outdate policies, underutilized sources of knowledge and the need for globalization of educational content.