Food Environment Education: Agricultural Education in Natural Resource Management

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