NICETIES OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION

 With a rapidly increasing population and a demand to feed billions of people and livestock, the agriculture industry needs talented and professional youth willing to make a commitment to agriculture. In fact, agriculture plays a vital role, being sources of livelihood, contribution to national revenue, supply of food as well as fodder, significance to the international trade, marketable surplus, source of raw material, foreign exchange resources, great employment opportunities, economic development, source of food, nutritional and livelihood security. Despite tremendous progress made by India in the field of industry and services, agriculture continues to play a pivotal role in India’s 2 trillion economy. Nearly 60 per cent of Indian households depend on farming. Agriculture remains a key contributor to India’s economic development not only by its share of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but also as a drive for industrial growth by producing critical raw materials and by funnelling, saving and consumption behaviour on which the sales of many industrial products depend. Agriculture as a concept has grown as well. A decade or two back, it was associated solely with the production of basic crops (cereals, millets, pulses, oil crops, fibre cro​ps, sugarcane, cotton and potatoes). Modern agriculture includes forestry, bee keeping, mushroom production, poultry, dairy, fishery and hi-tech horticulture production, including plantations and medicinal & aromatic plants. In India it forms an integral and important component of livelihood, nutritional, environment and employment security and has become one of the major drivers of overall growth. India, accounting for 17% of the world's population and over 30% of the world’s smallholder farmers, and hardly 2.5% of the world's land and 4% of the world’s water resources, greatly impacts and gets impacted by the state of global food, agriculture and natural resource system. Thus, the major global initiatives and foresight must be kept in mind while developing leadership in agricultural sciences to ensure global competitiveness, equitable knowledge sharing, and environmental sustainability. Accordingly, the system should move from the Land-Grant to a “World Grant” pattern. The new curricula, courses and contents have been designed to duly inform the students of the new global initiatives, such as Global Green Economy; Knowledge Economy; Global Zero Hunger Challenge; UN International Year themes, viz. International Years for Pulses, Family Farmers and Smallholder Farmers, Soil and Water; Sustainable Development Goals, 2030; and International Agriculture and Development Challenge, 2050. Keeping in view the importance of agriculture in every sphere of life, the need for agricultural education has arisen. Realistically, agricultural education is so important because it provides many opportunities for students to grow and develop their internship abilities. It is structured to assess learner’s knowledge and skills in the management of soil, raising crops and animals, processing, storage, value addition and marketing of agricultural produce and for keeping records and accounts. It helps to effectively assess the scientific, vocational and technological competencies of candidates to fit into the various sub-sectors of agriculture and for tertiary education.

Dr S.D. Upadhyaya

Dean, Agriculture