CIFE celebrates agricultural education day

Mumbai:  The agricultural education day was celebrated on Monday which was attended by the faculty and the students. Dr. Gopal Krishna, Director ICAR-CIFE gave a thoughtful insight into the modernization of fisheries education and invited innovative suggestions from the students. Dr. N.P Sahu, Dean Academics emphasized on the need to expedite the reforms in fisheries education in order to meet the projected fish production in India by 2050 and also to alleviate the nutritional deficiency by making food fish available to everyone. In this context, a speech competition was organized for the students, where twenty-three students participated in the contest. The students made a critical evaluation of agricultural education in general and fisheries in particular, and provided innovative suggestions to improve the fisheries education to meet the requirements of students and farmers.

It is important to induct competitive and motivating teachers, who can instil interests in students to take up challenges in the field. Focus should be placed on farmer-friendly technologies. Farmers should be included in the education process and the institutions should closely work with farmers and industries. Extension activities in India in fisheries field should be intensified to establish a direct link between the fisheries education, research and the stakeholders. Improvement in traditional farming is necessary, which can be accomplished by technology dissemination. The gap between classroom teaching and the field experience needs to be effectively bridged by devising programs that expose students to practical problems in the field and motivate them to take up research work to solve those problems.

The education system requires reforms to train students in the field of their interest. A well balanced education should create scientists, farmers and entrepreneurs among the students. Modernization of infrastructure in fisheries institutes will tremendously improve the quality of research and the students as well. Fisheries subjects should be introduced from the primary level to motivate young students to take up higher education in fisheries. Student visits, exhibitions, symposia and conferences should be organized to popularize the fisheries education. The number of Fisheries Universities should be increased to cater to the increasing demand for professional fisheries graduates.

The program ended with vote of thanks