Abstract:
This paper presents findings of a survey of international agencies and organizations assessing the importance of certain basic and applied skills in four broad categories of production agriculture. Since thousands of U.S. and non U.S. citizens are trained to become future participants in international agriculture, this survey attempts to assess the relative importance of skills in plant production (agronomy/horticulture), animal production, agricultural mechanics and engineering, and general educational skills. Survey results support the idea that U.S. scale and technology is not completely appropriate for the training of international agriculturalists. Smaller machinery, smaller animal enterprise units, crop planning, pest identification and control were among the most important skills. Solving practical math problems and effective oral and written communication skills were among very important by the respondents. Given an opportunity to list up to three languages important to their agency's work, the respondents' most cited languages were French, Spanish and English.
Keywords:
international agriculture, employablity skills
 Download Article | [ ] | 537 kB |
