Posted June 1996
While most agricultural education institutions in developing countries were created with the mandate of contributing to national and local development, few are effectively playing this important role. One problem is the distance or alienation between educational institutions and rural communities as well as a lack of linkages with "grassroots" development organizations such as farmer organizations (FOs).
Farmer organizations are owned and governed by farmers and work for farmers' interests. They are organizations by farmers for farmers. They include farmers' associations, farmers' unions, agricultural cooperatives and chambers of agriculture. A distinction should be made between FOs, which are accountable to farmers through their elected representatives, and NGOs which may work for farmers, but which are not governed by them.
FOs can be effective mechanisms for agricultural education institutions to achieve linkages with rural communities and play a more active developmental role. In this regard, one of the recommendations of the FAO round table on "Strategy Options for Intermediate and Higher Level Education in Agriculture", held in Maracay, Venezuela in 1991, was that "agricultural education institutions should participate in rural development activities..." through "contact with the rural milieu.." in order to address "real problems of the agricultural sector".
Agricultural education institutions also need to be more responsive to problems of degradation of the natural resource base for agriculture. The environmental crisis facing many developing countries demands that agricultural education institutions reorient their curricula and teaching programmes to incorporate resource management for sustainable agricultural and rural development. Furthermore, students need to learn how to adapt and apply agro-ecological principles to local farming systems. This requires that scientific knowledge be combined with the knowledge farmers have about their specific local environments. One way to accomplish this is through joint agricultural development and natural resource management efforts at the field level involving educational institutions and farmer organizations.
The competencies students require in environmental protection and sustainable agricultural development can only come when experiential learning in appropriate off-campus settings is included as a major component in curricula. To be effective, training of students should feature agricultural/rural problem situations at their origins (e.g., farm, community, watershed). These problem situations should be built into courses of study as learning projects on which students and faculty work in collaboration with farmer organizations.
The benefits of linking agricultural education institutions and FOs in partnerships for development would be mutual. Most agricultural education institutions have few activities related to rural communities and small farmers, and as a result play a minimal role in local development. Working with FOs, which are often in close contact with rural communities and increasingly play a role in agricultural technology generation and dissemination, agricultural education institutions can contribute to development goals and improve the relevancy of their teaching programmes.
FOs often focus their efforts on small farmers in marginal areas and combine their agricultural and resource conservation activities with human resource development activities. By working in close contact with rural communities and farmers, and by addressing a wide range of local needs, many FOs have a high level of "social legitimacy." A strength of FOs is their representation of and accountability to farmers, but a weakness is their lack of a technological base and the capacity for experimentation. While some FOs carry out informal on-farm technology validation, they usually lack the technical capability required for research, especially in complex, diversified agro-ecological systems. Thus, while FOs have direct access to farmers, represent their interests and reflect their social context, they often lack technical agricultural expertise and the capacity for experimentation.
If farmer-centred development is the goal, it cannot happen without the active and direct involvement of farmers' representative organizations. Partnerships among agricultural education institutions and FOs can be an effective way to link scientific agricultural knowledge and technology with farmers' local knowledge and practices. Agricultural teachers, students and farmers working and learning together can result in new, productive local options for sustainable agricultural and rural development.
Linking
would allow each to complement the comparative advantages of the others. Such a partnership would strengthen the capability of agricultural education institutions and FOs to address local sustainable agricultural and rural development concerns.
 
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