Educational institutions should get ready for challenges posed by Agriculture 4.0, or the farming and fishery sector getting technologized by the Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIRe).
The challenges and how to deal with them were discussed in a symposium themed “Education for Inclusive Growth of Society 5.0” organized by the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (Seameo) and University of Tsukuba (UoT) at its Tokyo Campus in Japan on February 13-14.
Glenn Gregorio, Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (Searca) director, talked about challenges and curricular imperatives in developing next-generation leaders of the agriculture sector in Southeast Asia.
He noted the challenges from Agriculture 4.0 include “preference for technology over human labor, security issues, reliability and stability of technologies and the reluctance of people to change” and ethical concerns that need to be addressed at the school level.
“Character education therefore becomes even more important as we usher in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution characterized by changes, innovations and disruptions in the society due to the fast-paced innovation and technology development,” Gregorio said.
He explained that while FIRe innovations and disruptions would mean increased productivity and efficiency, it could in another way negatively affect social identities, values and established ethics.
“We need innovators with big hearts to be the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” he said stressing that the best resource for that would be neither capital nor labor, but people who can create new ideas and innovation.
“Searca’s vision for the agriculture sector, for instance, is toward the application of modern farm technologies and practices that will increase productivity and efficiency,” Gregorio said.
He said the pillars of modern agriculture are “organizing and managing agriculture as a business, changing the social structure through asset reform, and nurturing values respecting nature and community.”
Gregorio also said there is a need to transform small farmers into entrepreneurs and overcome problems of scale by concentrating in key production areas through industry-wide clustering, and strengthening of cooperatives and farmers organizations.
Poverty reduction also an objective
He explained that altering the social structure can be done by strengthening the role of agriculture for poverty reduction, empowering farmers and fisherfolk, transferring property or usufruct rights to farmers and fisherfolk, and stimulating investments among owners and rights holders to make assets productive.
Gregorio also shared the values needed in character formation for the next-generation Agriculture 4.0 identified by the Center for Curriculum Redesign as follows: mindfulness, curiosity, resilience, fortitude, ethics and leadership.
If capital, labor, and research and technology are the brain and brawn, innovator-leaders with those key values will serve as heart of the Agriculture 4.0, he added.
The Searca director also emphasized that character education should be delivered in a fresh, creative, and communicative context-specific approach rather than the usual teacher monologues.
He added that parents and community involvement in character education can also be an important dimension that needs to be explored.
Gregorio shared Searca’s initiative to establish school-plus-home gardens projects (S+HGP) as a learning facility for students to understand the basics of farming through experiential learning activities while instilling in them the value of agriculture.
Moreover, as recommended by Searca, teachers are beginning to integrate concepts of organic agriculture, nutrition and climate change in the lesson plans of English, Science, Mathematics and Technology and Livelihood Education subjects of Grades 4 and 7 students.
“The emphasis on the plus in the S+HGP went beyond merely building gardens in children’s homes but resulted in having parents conscientiously getting more involved in the nutrition of their children,” Gregorio said.
Searca is one of the oldest regional centers of Seameo that was founded in 1965 to promote cooperation in education, science and culture among Southeast Asian nations. The University of Tsukuba has been an affiliate member of Seameo since 2009.
