Following the rising health consciousness among urban population and increased necessity of creating awareness about balanced nutrition among large proportion of rural population of world, there exists great necessity of including nutrition related topics into curricula of not only agricultural education institutions but also into other basic sciences curricula. On the present day the issue of global food security has recently emerged as an important societal concern. Factors such as the prospect of necessity to feed an additional two billion people in the next two or three decades, the presence today of nearly 870 million people who are chronically hungry and malnourished, and the recent social unrest associated with food price increases; all have contributed to awakening of interest in the issues like sustainable agriculture, nutrition security and reduction of postharvest losses.
In several countries already nutrition is part of curriculum in agriculture and allied branches. In India some of the courses such as home science, food science and nutrition extensively deal with almost all possible related topics of nutrition in detail, while other allied courses have basic topics of nutrition in the curriculum. With the rising concern for postharvest losses alleviation there is need to add topics related to “reduction of postharvest nutrient losses and food processing” into curricula.
Including these topics in curricula would ensure considerable difference with work capacity of agricultural workers in enhancing nutritional security by enlightening farmers, rural population and others, towards ways to fulfill essential nutrient requirements of their families from the available food resources. Already several International organizations are working towards the cause to educate about nutritional security and ways to achieve it. Hence we can hope that maximum institutions would find it relevant to include these topics into the curriculum.
I would like to quote my personal experience while working as extension worker. During graduation (B.Sc. Horticulture) we were briefly taught with some of the topics related to food security, source of nutrients, nutrition requirements of average person, malnutrition disorders, role of horticulture in ensuring food and nutrition security. When I started working as Horticulture Extension Officer I had a chance to implement the topics learnt, and encouraged villagers growing kitchen gardens with different vegetables and some fruit plants which could contribute to compensate the nutrition requirement of family and also ensure food safety...
Hence I feel integrating nutrition related topics, also including concepts related to reduction of postharvest nutrient losses and food processing into curricula of agriculture and allied courses would show a considerable impact on work ability of agricultural workers (extension workers) to promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture and also to achieve food and nutrition security.
.........................
Vijay Yadav Tokala
PhD (Fruit Science) Scholar (Punjab Agricultural University, India)
The Postharvest Education Foundation, USA (Trained as Postharvest Specialist)
e-mail: [email protected]
Sr. Vijay Yadav Tokala