Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Except in those cases where a new enterprise is being developed and thus
buildings needed, improvements or development of new structures will have very
little effect on increasing existing animal productivity.
11.5.6 Education
Education is an essential and critical part of any activity designed to bring about
change. How the education is accomplished, formal, informal, and practical, hands
on, schooling, workshops, field days, or any other are all appropriate and a mix of
approaches is usually the best. For agriculture this must include demonstration plots
or other demonstrations because farmers will not accept and apply a new practice
unless they have seen it work in the field.
One of the major failings in education has been the general unwillingness to
educate the educators or teachers. Teachers can only be effective when they have a
thorough background, understanding, and experience in using that which they teach.
This must include hands-on experience.
A second major mistake people tend to make is to call education an expense and to
say that education is too expensive. This is never the case. First and foremost, education
is an investment not an expense. As an investment it results in the best return to invested
money of any productive activity. Second, the monetary investment is relatively small
compared to most activities that people undertake.
One other aspect of education that is often overlooked is research, which can be
viewed as the researcher learning how to do something. When the researcher learns
how to do something, that information is shared with his or her colleagues and even-
tually with the community and the society as a whole. Thus, research into the best
planting times, best fertilizer use, best varieties of crops to plant, and the like must
be carried out and the results shared with the agricultural community. These types of
research need to be long term and ongoing. Climate and society need time to
change, and so research needs to be continual so that recommendations pertaining to
the present situation can be made.
Often technology must be adapted to an area where it has not been used before. In
these cases it needs to be investigated, studied, and changed to make sure it is appropriate
to the local situation. Even in small areas such as a state or on an island, there may be
different climatic situations in different places. For example, one can look at the varia-
bility in the climate in Ohio and on the island of Leyte in the Philippines described in
Chapter 8. Once technologies are well studied and found to be beneficial to a local situ-
ation, then the farmers of the area need to be educated in the use of these technologies.
11.5.7 Government Interventions and Subsidies
Government interventions and subsidies can have both positive and negative effects on
food and food production. In general, governments wish to have a positive effect on
agricultural production. This stems from several sources. First, agriculture is always
a major part of an economic system. Second, self-sufficiency leads to stability and
increases independence. Third, food in large quantities is needed to support the army
