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By Editor in Training & Education on 22nd Feb 2012 21:15
Tables can be turned on faltering interest in agricultural science, MARK ADAMS writes: This week's cancellation of the intake of students to the agriculture program at the University of Western Sydney has justifiably rung alarm bells.
Our chief scientist Professor Ian Chubb was quick to argue that a strategy of hope was not going to address the decline in the number of students selecting agricultural science as their first preference at university. We need to do things differently. 
It is in our national interest to better support agriculture at our universities, because, as Chubb and his team recently noted about Australia's involvement in international agricultural research, we are good at it. Australian science more generally cannot hope to be good at everything; we are too small a community. But in agriculture we punch well above our weight and it makes no sense to throw away that hard-won advantage.
Naturally, we are good at it because of investment, especially in the post-war period when governments properly recognised that without research and development we would struggle to maintain the international competitiveness of our export-focused agricultural industries. This was followed up by far-sighted decisions to extend our R&D prowess to education, not just for Australians but for international students as well. Remarkable successes such as the Colombo Plan, which promoted technical co-operation and assisted in the sharing and transfer of technology among Commonwealth countries, might be revisited now.
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The goal of making our faculties and schools of agriculture and their degree programs more attractive to students has to include re-thinking of the role of agriculture academics in research and in teaching programs. An artificial divide of ''fundamental'' science belonging solely in science departments and ''applied'' science belonging in agriculture faculties and departments, is plainly dumb. After all, it suggests that the best and brightest should aspire to work in science rather than agriculture faculties and departments.
It is dumb because students take their lead from the staff who teach them and because it has created a profound anti-agriculture culture among those who take part in the annual ritual of anonymous peer-review of grant proposals to the major source of funding for fundamental research - the Australian Research Council. We have to learn and teach how to produce more food while reducing reliance on fossil fuels and nitrogen fertiliser, and halting and then reversing our history of degrading the atmosphere, soils, habitat and biodiversity.
I can think of nothing more important than the challenges of food, water and soil security. Every incoming student in every university should be compelled to take a first-year course focused on these issues. Perhaps only then will they take a different view of agriculture.
Mark Adams is dean of the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Sydney.
Source & More: www.canberratimes.com.au
Read more articles in Training & Education, by Editor or from February 2012.
