The Disconnect Between National Agriculture Development Policy and Agriculture Curriculum in Higher Education in PNG

 1415 hrs Saturday 30 December 2023 Clocking out on my last day of work for this year!

Thank you to my children for your patience and understanding when I missed out on spending Christmas and Boxing Day with you. 

Picking up the trail on 2nd January 2024 after a couple of days of rest. 

Thank you my colleague for the hundreds of kilometres safely driven to take us to people and places. 🙏

Praise be to our Lord for His PROTECTION AND PROVISION from Lae Morobe Province through Kol Peles Goroka Eastern Highlands, to Beautiful and rocky Simbu, to Jiwaka the home of the free, to breathtaking Mountain Hagen to chilly Iali Ice Ialibu and friendly Pangia ( which I can confidently say will be the most well PLANNED PNG town once fully developed. God you are AWESOME..I truly love this country!

🙏❤️🇵🇬

🟢 Stay tuned for stories and thoughts of PNG people as this journey to educate and train animal health specialists continues. 

Further, my journey sharing the lives of everyday people has proven that there is a total disconnect in national agriculture development policy (there's nothing wrong with the policies-they're pointing in the right direction), it's the implementation as well as tertiary educations agriculture curricular that are missing the point.

Here I share an opinion on the disconnect between policy, practice and agriculture training curriculum in higher education. 

🟢 Some institutions are still training human resources to farm with spades while the world has moved onto mechanisation.

 

🟢 Some institutions are training hundreds of agriculture scientists (these will eventually equate to several thousand graduates in 5-10 years... and sadly I have yet to come across any national policy that states that a corresponding number of jobs will be created for these specialist Agriculture scientists)... which begs the question...Where will they work❓ 

The current trend is that most agriculture science graduates are becoming secondary school teachers by default when they find there are no jobs available for them in the field for which they are trained. This is not to say that being a secondary school teacher is bad- on the contrary. (In fact both my parents were teachers and I hold the profession as most noble).

There are countless agriculture teachers that are passionate about teaching our children and influencing their students to take up training in their former higher education institution. It is my opinion that these passionate individuals should have been trained in other specialization programs instead of generalized tropical agriculture. The job market is flooded with tropical agriculturalists but there are not enough jobs for us anymore. 

🟢 Therefore agriculture training at higher education level should produce specially trained human resources.

These include but should not be limited to;

▶️ 1. mechanised (agriculture crop production) farming methods to increase agriculture production, (whilst lowering production costs- making food more affordable). 

♎Which national agriculture training institution has captured this in their curriculum and is teaching this speciality?

▶️ 2. Intensified livestock production utilising artificial insemination programs- it is not rocket science and large agribusiness (Ramu Agribusiness, Rumion piggery) companies are already using this once "foreign technology." 

♎The continuous teaching of the oestrus cycle in cows is handy background information in animal breeding but that knowledge alone in this modern day will not keep a farm economically up float. Classroom drawings of animal genetics and variations can also be useful background information but the domestic livestock industry needs more PRACTICAL EXPERTS than theoretical academics. 

Institutions must teach practical artificial insemination of livestock among other PRACTICAL skills to make positive change to the domestic livestock industry. 

♎Which national agriculture training institution has captured this in their curriculum and is teaching this speciality?

▶️ 3. Post harvest production and management . I need not comment on this one. Just see the tens of tonnes of fruits and vegetables rotting away around Mt Hagen market. This food could have been sold to other PNG towns. Money from that sale could have bought food, medicine and school fees for that farmer. Money from that sale could have prevented one more person from squatting in towns looking for opportunities! Over four decades since independence and our nation is still struggling with post harvest management of fresh agriculture produce. It's disappointing indeed. 

On the same note, almost the entire Highlands region is producing a whopping large tonnage of peanuts- let's not talk about production of the same in Markham Valley...when will we ever see a commercial peanut processing facility ❓

For years they told us that we could not grow rice and wheat and thanks to our existing agronomists we have successfully grown the grain crops. Why then are we not commercially growing the crops on a large scale? We have highly skilled mechanical engineers who can calibrate, operate and fix mechanisation instruments for large scale production of rice and wheat. This will mean that we will create more local jobs and hopefully decrease the cost of imported flour and rice.

▶️ 4. Marketing and agriculture business. 

Take for example honey production. Apiculture is increasingly gaining momentum in the Highlands of PNG and there are many small holder farmers participating in honey production -sadly making a sale is often difficult while tens of tonnes of imported non-organic honey keeps popping up on supermarket shelves. Importing honey should be a last option when the quantity of local honey produced is insufficient for the domestic market. The same should be said about bulb onion production! 

▶️ 5. (Agricultural) Waste Management 

▶️ 6. Extension specialists. 

It is no secret that the national agriculture extension machinery once the pride of the national Department of Agriculture and Livestock (DAL) has died and long been buried! This critical role of DAL through it's localised provincial functions has been under resourced for decades. Just walk into your local extension office and I assure you that you will be met with derelict facilities and sad stories of how they wanted to do so many things but funding was a constraint. A far cry from government office Waigani. 

♎ This has given rise to foreign agribusiness companies providing cash crop oriented extension services to sustain production to maintain their business interest which is a cost effective strategy. This has created more jobs for us but we must provide relevant training to enable our citizens to keep these jobs from highly paid foreign consultants. 

🇵🇬 I am urging our policy makers to demand that higher education institutions (those focusing on agriculture training and education) produce the appropriately skilled human resources required to make PNG become the richest black nation. Hold our universities accountable! Training should not be designed to the comfort of us academics, they should be designed to meet national goals and targets! 

🇵🇬 You don't get away that easily Mr Policy maker, while the higher education institutions are doing their part, the onus is on you to ensure that small medium enterprises and agribusiness funding machinery become more accessible to your citizens!

🇵🇬❤️ Anyways enjoy the remainder of 2023 my dear friends and stay tuned for more grassroot stories in 2024 as we all do our part to advance knowledge for sustainable development in PNG and the Pacific.

God bless 🙏