Preface

"From the time of Pliny the Younger, the tranquillity of this hilltop has inspired works that have brought stimulation and delight in our search to understand nature and that part of nature that is ourselves. Enjoy them as you add to them." - From the Library of the Bellagio Study and Conference Center

Acknowledgments

This book owes its existence to the foresight of the Rockefeller Foundation and its uniquely supportive Bellagio Study and Conference Center. The honor accorded to me in being selected as a Resident at Bellagio for the month of May 1996, provided the preliminary motivation to collate and draft the text, and the time spent in my assigned study in the forest of the villa's grounds allowed the thoughts to be redrafted toward their final form. The staff of the Villa Serbelloni demonstrated an art form in managing scholars, stimulating interaction between a dozen persons from different academic fields, and making all feel worthy of the special surroundings so conducive to fellowship and reflection. I thank all concerned with the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bellagio Center.

Before others, I wish to thank my wife Jan for her support in this, yet another diversion from family life, and for her prints and sketches which make the book at least attractive enough for some to open.

I also thank sincerely the many persons who assisted in the conception and production of this book. Their ideas and inputs are clear to me even if they are not to others. However, I accept all responsibility for the mistakes and unpopular opinions expressed in the book. I especially wish to acknowledge Derek Tribe who initially suggested the Bellagio experience as one which a young and naive Dean of a huge amalgamated faculty would need in his second year if he was ever to do anything beyond administration. I thank Derek, together with John Dillon and Doug Forno for their encouragement of the concept of the book, and the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation of Australia for travel support.

I gratefully acknowledge the generosity and support of my employer, The University of Melbourne in providing the necessary time away from my desk and for the encouragement to pursue the project.

To those who willingly agreed to read the draft book or its chapters, I gratefully acknowledge your comments - most of which have been accommodated. Especially I acknowledge the inputs of my colleagues; Barrie Bardsley, Alex Buchanan, John Cary, Adrian Egan, Leo Maglin, Glyn Rimmington, Derek Tribe, and Robert White. Thanks also to Mary Vatsaloo and Bernadette Matthews for word processing and organizational support. JLF

Abbreviations and Acronyms

Foreword

It was agriculture that enabled human beings to become producers rather than hunters and gatherers, and in doing so to settle into communities. From these earliest settlements have developed the elaborate and complex societies of today. During all these millennia, we have tended to take agriculture for granted. This is unfortunate, and unfair by all those - farm men and women in the fields, scientists in their laboratories, and policy makers in parliaments and elsewhere, for instance - who have contributed to the development of agriculture; an enterprise that is as significant as it is exciting.

The history of modern agriculture which has made possible the greatest leap in well-being that the human family has yet experienced, has seen the integration of research-based knowledge with traditional wisdom to bring about great improvements in agricultural varieties, farming techniques and management practices. The consequence of that "marriage" has been undreamed of increases of food productivity which served as the center of concentric circles of progress. Understanding that process and, more important, the substance that made - and can continue to make - that process work, is the task of agricultural education. The origins of agricultural education as we know it today, and the challenges that lie ahead of it, are the central themes of this marvelous little book by Dean Lindsay Falvey.

This is a very personal book. It is not just a scholarly recounting of events, an arid collection of theories, or a series of anecdotal episodes strung together. It bespeaks intense knowledge of the subject and material as well as personal experience in the field. Most of all, however, it presents agricultural education as a societal endeavor whose future development is of clear relevance to the progress of all people everywhere. It is presented with a rare combination of erudition and a warm sense of humanity.

The major challenge for the future, as he points out, is for agricultural education to explore and fully comprehend the complex interactions of science, people, and the environment; to strengthen its relevance by grappling with the scientific issues, both national and international, that affect the continued transformation of agriculture and the protection of the natural resources on which agriculture depends.

For all those like myself who believe that agriculture and agricultural research, more specifically, stand at the very heart of the future of humanity, it is important to be aware of the strength and the weaknesses of current agricultural education. It is only from that starting point that we can move towards ensuring that agricultural education remains relevant, interesting, and vibrant.

Dean Falvey makes a signal contribution to helping us acquire such understanding. He makes the material easily accessible in an engaging and "user friendly" style. He has organized his text in such a way that it can attract many classes of readers. He caters to the needs of browsers, dedicated readers who have not succumbed to the "sound bite syndrome", teachers who seek out resource material, students who want to be inspired, specialists who are interested only in information on a particular topic, or even those who do not wish to handle a book at all but want access to it in electronic form. For those who want their minds to soar, there is poetry as well.

This is truly a book for our times by an author whose knowledge and interests are not bound by time. From yesterday's experience he challenges us to create bright tomorrows. Dare we evade that challenge?

Ismail Serageldin
Chairman,
The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
Vice President for Environmentally Sustainable Development,
The World Bank

To the Reader Dear Reader, as I recall the many additional thoughts which I originally wished to include in this book, and the many which probably should not have found there way in, I realize that if only a small number of persons think and act in the manners propounded, I will be satisfied. Such a subject can never be covered in one publication.

This book can be appreciated in a number of ways apart from reading from cover to cover. For those readers who wish to trace the main arguments, the text may be followed without reference to the Boxes. Others may choose to refer primarily to the Boxes which are mainly the work of others. Some may elect to simply scan the words and dally over the sketches, which pay tribute to the stimulating and productive airs of the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio on Lake Como - where the publication was given form. Some may even prefer to simply read the poems which attempt to capture the essence of each Chapter. The publication is also accessible on the Internet at http://www.agfor.unimelb.edu.au/falveybk/

This book takes the apparent declining emphasis on agricultural education as an indicator of need for change. It suggests that the increasing separation of urban populations from food production has partly fueled interest in greater environmental care, and that agricultural education should embrace this public viewpoint in order to command respect and funding. The benefits which accrue from education are assumed on the basis of investigations in less developed countries which indicate that GDP growth is higher where education is emphasized even where significant policy distortions work against economic growth.

Agricultural education in both more and less developed countries is under pressure from apparent reduced demand and fiscal pressure. In less developed countries this may relate to the profile of students gaining access to universities - mainly from urban areas and privileged backgrounds, and to the polices of the countries which emphasize investment in new industries. In more developed countries this may relate to a continuing reduction in the numbers of persons engaged in modern agriculture with its high levels of automation and hence the partial loss of past political influence, and to public and student perceptions that agriculture is an mature industry that does not offer great potential growth for future career opportunities. Agriculture also suffers from an image of damaging the environment.

Criticisms of the environmental impact of modern food production have merit in many cases. However, there is a need for a wider public understanding of the compromises that necessarily must occur in order to produce sufficient food at current levels of knowledge. Projections of future food demand indicate that present technologies are insufficient to produce global food requirements. The challenges and opportunities for food production research and development contrasts with common perceptions.

The dual trends of concern for the environment and the need for increased food production provide a context for future agricultural education. Existing courses mainly take a balanced scientific approach - to this there would appear to be a need to include a greater input from the humanities including an understanding of environmental ethics. The imperative to produce food, as far as we know today, will continue to rely on continued intervention in the natural environment. In accepting the responsibility to manage the environment with care, agricultural education may need to see itself as a field of natural resource management - managing the natural resource base (soil, water, mined fertilizers and so on) to produce food while understanding the interactions with that resource base.

The opportunity to introduce change exists as a function of the near global shifts in the popularity of courses and funding. To introduce such changes, the field of agricultural extension - the dissemination of information to producers and others - can be seen as part of education as an extension of the classroom. Electronic technologies already allow this and may be introduced as much by fiscal imperatives as by visionary managers of education. Past trends of agricultural education in more developed countries being followed by less developed countries may be superseded by communication technologies allowing international access to high quality and relevant courses. Investment in this sector in less developed countries may do better to focus on these technologies than infrastructure and traditional approaches to education

The term natural resource management is used to emphasize that the majority of the world's terrestrial resources are managed by farmers, foresters and those in industries and services which support them. For the foreseeable future, the objectives of this management are to increase food and fiber production efficiency in a manner which is equitable for all producers including the poor, and which minimizes impact on the natural resource base.

Agricultural education faces the choice of becoming a variable output from science or skills oriented courses with less understanding of the interactions between science, people and the environment, or of shifting its own orientation to embrace public requirements and emerging technologies. Individual institutions and nations will determine their own response, if they indeed recognize the choice. The great agricultural education centers of the world next century will, more probably, be those which are able to offer their services within areas of specialization on an international basis, and which create a learning environment which encourages motivated students to understand agriculture as the management of risks within the environment - the management of natural resources.

The book begins with the significant impact of food production on the environment in Chapter 1 and, in Chapter 2 places that impact within the context of the absolute need to further increase food production while reducing poverty. In creating a new knowledge base, the need to increase environmental empathy and understanding in existing education is discussed in Chapter 3.

In order to discuss the current and future needs for agricultural and natural resource education in less developed countries, Chapter 4 considers university agricultural education while Chapter 5 introduces vocational agricultural education. The origins of agricultural education, its present delivery and possible future metamorphosis into the wider field of natural resource management education in more developed countries is then introduced in Chapter 6.

Chapter 7 then discusses the development agencies including the international agricultural research centers as a suitable focus for forming a closer association between research and education and between universities in more and less developed countries. The origin of agricultural extension as part of education is emphasized in Chapter 8 and rapidly developing electronic and other communication technologies in extension and education are considered in the context of change in the university learning environment in Chapter 9.

The final chapter amplifies the opportunity and responsibility which agricultural educators and their funders have in shaping a future for education which is more accessible, internationally interconnected, current, and oriented to balancing the issues of food production, environmental care and financial rewards.

I hope you enjoy the words, graphics and thoughts expressed in these ten chapters. The generosity of individuals and organizations has allowed the book to made available cheaply to some and free to others according to circumstances. I hope its value is higher than its price. The value of books in general was shown to me several years ago in Vietnam where a collaborating author of the Vietnamese translation advised the setting of our book price at the government breakfast allowance rate - the rationale being that any self-respecting intellectual would be prepared to forgo one breakfast for a book. But if this book was for sale, I would prefer the words of Cramer (1993) who, in his preface to his thoughtful discourse on life and science, quotes a colleague as saying ... whoever has two pairs of pants should sell one pair and use the money to buy this book.

Lindsay Falvey
Melbourne
September, 1996