This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
News from the Académie d’Agriculture de France : our colleague observer at the UEAA steering committee, Dr Agnes Ricroch, is appointed as Secretary of Life Sciences Section of the French Academy of Agriculture.
20 10 2016
Creation of a new commission: “agricultural education”
(see report of the General Assembly and of the Steering Committee reports
Paris, 11-12 October 2016)
A note from the Chairperson of this Electronic Working Group – J P Bastié (France)
At the general meeting of October 11, 2016 in Paris, it was officially recorded the establishment of a commission “agricultural education”.
This commission will focus initially on technical agricultural education, and the medium term objective, would be to produce a report on the various challenges that currently meet the farmers and particularly the young ones across Europe in running their own business and how could adequate technical agricultural education could assist them to better understand the changes in agriculture of today and tomorrow and help them to cope with those in the most efficient manner. We believe that farmers should make a decent living out of their production and to reach this goal, training and education are a critical key process.
Inspector General of the agriculture (Honorary), I am a local councilor in Bagnères de Luchon, who made the most of his career in agricultural education with responsibilities at the local level (school head of 3 agricultural schools), regional (responsible regional agricultural education in Aquitaine) and national (Deputy Director of the action of the educational community).
I proposed to the new president of the UEAA Thibier Michel, who is a friend and a colleague from the Academy of Agriculture of France with which I had the honor to work when I was Deputy Director and himself general manager in charge of agricultural education and French research, solicit the network of UEAA to mobilize agricultural schools to become even more than today major players accompanying a changing agriculture.
We believe working as an electronic working group with members UEAA across Europe. The principle of this group is based on exchange: the exchange of information, exchange of good practice and will be hosted at my level to be as light as your workload.
The first item we could think of would be to report on the state of the art in 2017:
What level of education is required for a person to start to run a farm?
- In what kind of schools does this person get trained?
- To achieve this we will set a questionnaire that we would send to you to fill.
Secondly, collect more precisely the practices and proposals for action on the following topics:
- How can the school become a major development actor with a strong insertion in its territory and relations increased with local partners (local authorities, farming profession, parents …)?
- How farms and technology workshops can they increase their role in technology transfer and innovation?
- What training to support agriculture mutation: initial and continuing training (linked to higher education)?
- What farmer profile of tomorrow to face the challenges and changes?
- How openness to the world through international cooperation can promotes local dynamics?
- How improove the link between sellers and incoming?
In the longer term, these exchanges in the GTE should promote the networking of these settlements at EU level, and enable exchanges of good practices and the establishment of a genuine European cooperation.
Before going forward in the implementation of this GTE, I would appreciate your input on the proposed method as above, knowing that an assessment will be made at the forthcoming general meeting in Florence in 2018.
For better efficiency of our work, it will be essential to have in each country a referent (you or someone you recommend us), knowing that I myself, am engaged to lead this commission at the UEAA level.