India should attain global standards in agriculture education, says Pawar

NEW DELHI - Minister for Agriculture and Food Processing Industries Sharad Pawar has called for evolving global standards to enhance quality and relevance of agricultural education and research in the country.

Addressing a two-day Conference of Vice Chancellors of Agriculture Universities and Directors of ICAR Institutes here, Pawar said that requisite models of public-private partnerships must be evolved for educational activities as well as for development.

He underlined the need for application and flow of technologies from lab to the market place and for strengthening of national agricultural research and education system infrastructure through active interface with the industry.

“In order to effectively address the emerging needs of agricultural sector, we require highly competent human resources,” he added.

Referring to the revised course curricula now implemented in agricultural universities, Pawar said that new curricula focuses on development of knowledge, skills and attitude.

“To make it demand driven new courses have been added including the Experiential Learning with the objective of entrepreneurship development in students,” he added.

The Minister further said: “Degradation of natural resources and unpredictable shifts in climatic patterns have been impacting the farming practices.

“Competitions posed by globalization and opening up of economies, ethical issues of trade related intellectual property rights, genetically modified foods and organisms and enforcement of strict quality regimes need immediate attention while developing technically qualified manpower,” he added.

Pawar said the infrastructure including the laboratories, farm and other facilities in some of the institutions are quite old and need renovation and upgradation.

He said that though the ICAR supports agricultural universities to the possible extent to develop globally competitive infrastructure for technology generation and dissemination and human capacity building, the States should also rise to the occasion by extending adequate support.

He called upon the Vice Chancellors to expeditiously take steps for adoption of the Model Act developed by the ICAR for agricultural universities.

Expressing happiness over increase in number of woman students in higher agricultural education in the recent years, he said that 60 new girls hostels in 38 agricultural universities have been completed that can accommodate 3,000 more girl students. (ANI)