Agriculture educators plan for future
In any skill or discipline, the more you learn, the better you’ll do…and the field of agriculture is no different. That’s why those involved in agricultural education are looking for ways to keep Belize and neighbouring countries abreast of the latest advances around the globe. News 5’s Patrick Jones has more.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The over sixty deans and directors of agriculture programmes in Central America are knocking heads over the next two days to come up with ways of improving the quality of education being offered in regional universities. Salvador Monge, IICA¡¦s representative in Belize says its time to prioritize the issue.
Salvador Monge, IICA Belize Country Representative
“One of the ways that we are going to implement is to dialogue with our private sector, because we need to know what the private sector think about the current graduates in our universities in order to ask if they need another skill, of if they need another knowledge about management or another language or other skills. In this sense we have many differences in Central America.”
Eliminating those differences will start with a change in attitude toward agriculture. Director of U.B.’s Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Jorge Cawich says agriculture has progressed way beyond slash and burn.
Jorge Cawich, Dir., Department of Agriculture, U.B.
“I feel that we need to generate more interest at the primary school level, probably at the secondary level, and then we’ll have a higher enrolment at the university level. In our country unfortunately, people view agriculture as hard work, dirty work, and we need to chance that concept to make it more attractive to our students.”
“What we’re looking at when it comes to agriculture is to look at more sustainable farming practices; means and ways in which we could balance development and conservation. That is what we are at the university level looking at. How can we integrate curricula, the agriculture program and the natural resources as well.”
And while the broader goal of regional integration is to make it easy for citizens of countries from Panama to Belize to move freely, Monge says the right foundations must be laid to ensure success.
Salvador Monge
“It’s not just a dialogue because of course we are going to prepare an agenda and we hope that in this agenda we are going to include some activities just for checking curricula, for the staff to understand what is accreditations, because we need to be sure that if some graduates of Belize for instance go to Costa Rican or Nicaraguan universities, they don’t have any trouble with respect to curriculum or with respect to accreditation. In this sense one of the main objectives of this forum is to establish a regional agency for accreditation.”
Whether that goal is achievable or more consultations will be required will be determined at the end of the meeting on Friday afternoon. Patrick Jones, for News 5.
