Union Minister of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Radha Mohan Singh, has said that the Modi government has provided special emphasis to uplift agricultural education for farmers. This will ensure that skilled human resources in agriculture will become the basis of agrarian advancement, reveals a release from the Press Information Bureau (PIB).

The Minister was speaking at a two-day convention titled “Agrivision 2019”, organised by Vidyarthi Kalyan Nyas in Pusa, New Delhi. The Minister said that in order to make education in agriculture useful, the government has implemented the 5th Dean Committee’s recommendations.

Under the amendment, all agricultural universities need to introduce agricultural degree courses like biotechnology, IT, remote sensing, bioinformatics, organic farming and agriculture business management, among others.

Four new programmes- B.Tech, B.Sc. Community Science, B.Sc. Food Nutrition and Dietetics and B.Sc. Sericulture have been included in the recommendations. The recommendations also emphasise experiential learning and skill and entrepreneurship development.

Singh also said that recently, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) launched the Rs 1,100-crore National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP). The project, which will be equally funded by the Government of India and the World Bank wants to attract talent as well as boost higher agricultural education in India.

Various changes like declaring the four-year Agriculture Horticulture Fisheries and Forestry degree as a “professional degree” and renaming the Rajendra Agriculture University as Dr Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University are among other highlights. Further, the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) has been set up in Jharkand’s Barhi and Assam in accordance with IARI, New Delhi.

The Student Rural Entrepreneurship Awareness Development Yojana (READY) scheme is running and provides practical experience of agriculture and entrepreneurship to UG students.

The press release also said the Agricultural Ministry and the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to promote skill development in agriculture, under which skill development training based on agriculture and related topics are organised regularly in Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs).