3rd National Symposium
Dates: 10-11 November 2005
Place: Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwa Vidyalaya, Raipur

Theme: Agricultural technological backstopping through education and training for self-employment

Sub themes:

  1. Agricultural education policy in the country

  2. Remolding of courses for self-employment generation

  3. Internationalization of higher education in agriculture in the context of GATT

  4. Vocational courses in upcoming and export oriented fields

  5. Standardization and uniformity in course curricula in agriculture and allied sciences

  6. Industry- SAUs linkage for agro-processing marketing and employment

  7. Agri-clinics and Agro-business

  8. Private extension system

Major Recommendations

  1. HRD programmes should be liberal and timely implemented.

  2. One percent of Agricultural GDP should be allocated to NARS with rational distribution to education, research and extension education.

  3. There is need to examine the existent course which have many good aspects and change the curricula if needed.

  4. It is necessary to strengthen the areas like taxonomy, disaster management, IPR etc.

  5. There is a great need to revamp the Home Science course curricula.

  6. The SAUs have a great strength to internationalize higher education and for this necessary specialization, infrastructure etc. need to be developed.

  7. SAUs may identify the niche areas and develop the needed course curricula in the niche areas across the disciplines for attracting international students.

  8. ICAR may provide proper guidelines for the course equivalence of graduate students from foreign countries.

  9. It is necessary to develop course curricula and necessary infrastructure for offering vocational courses in Agriculture, Veterinary sciences, Animal husbandry, Dairy Sciences and Fisheries.

  10. Trained technicians are needed and vocational courses in dairy sectors are to be developed and popularized among the youth especially rural youth.

  11. Some scope may be given for consideration of need based courses also in addition to the common one taught in the light of uniformity.

  12. Uniform admission procedure should be adopted in all SAUs.

  13. There may be agricultural engineering extension specialization in SAUs.

  14. Close collaboration with industrial extension centers and R&D institutes.

  15. Extension workers to farmers ratio is very wide. There is a need to reduce the gap in order to make the extension effective. Agri-clinics and Agro-business centers can fill the gap and support the extension services.

  16. Confidence building among the students is the need of the hour. There must be some curricula to built up confidence among the students to develop self-employment. For such activities the infrastructural developments funds support should come from ICAR.

  17. Privatization of extension services is inevitable in the present context of agriculture. Even other countries in the world are doing privatization. It is necessary to have public-private sector linkage and coordination for agricultural extension.

  18. E-extension has a great potential in India. Development of rural infrastructure is necessary for utilization of the e-extension potential in India.

  19. Contract farming can, in one way, help the small and medium farmers to get assured technological support for crop production as well as assured marketing to their products. However proper legislative protecting measures are needed to avoid exploitation of the farmers.

  20. In rainfed areas, blending of traditional and modern technologies is very much needed for better adoption of technology.