What are the implications of a rural development approach for education for agriculture, rural development and food security?
The main implication is that agricultural education has to adapt to change or risk becoming irrelevant (Warren, 1998). FAO has been investigating the change phenomenon in agricultural education and has, on its website, two recent papers (Gasperini, 2000 and Maguire, 2000) that analyse the need for change and suggest ways in which education systems can begin the change process by adopting a systemic approach to rural development. McCalla (1998), taking a world-view, warns that the agricultural science system will have to change. Isolated agricultural universities, dominated by the faculty and scientists, simply will not survive. The complexity of the challenge requires access to disciplines far beyond traditional agriculture. The changing role of civil society, participation and decentralisation will radically alter the clientele of universities and change the demands on them; and the role of proprietary private sector research will almost certainly increasingly dwarf public sector inve
