Viewpoint: Polan Lacki

If Rural Education Were "Housework", Agricultural Problems Would be Solved

An article by Polan Lacki
Translation by Sunny Maroo

There is a macro factor that exists in the globalized world, which, by all accounts, determines the rural producers’ success or failure; all the other factors, real or imaginary, are less important.

This macro factor is called efficiency.

As confirmation, it’s enough to look at the farmers who are already efficient, productive, competitive, and who basically, don’t need any paternal help. Those who have more problems are more dependent, vulnerable, and coincidentally, more inefficient.

In Latin America, the government doesn’t and will not have the capacity to compensate for the inefficiencies of these farmers through subsidies, and other paternalistic form of aid in the near future. To insist in the generalization and perpetuation of these compensations means losing time because the possibility of this occurring is zero.

Instead of subsidizing the inefficient, we should educate them so that they can transform themselves from being inefficient and dependent into efficient and emancipated.

However, we will only be successful in this proposed emancipation if we abandon the euphemisms, and face with determination and courage the "cause of the causes" from which these farmers’ inefficiencies originate. This cause is within the rural education system, that is to say, in the ‘fundamental’ rural schools (from the eighth and ninth year), in the agricultural-technical schools, in the agricultural science faculties and in the rural services.

This is a truth that must be told without "dressing it up"

The main reason the farmers are failing economically is because they don’t know how to produce, administrate or commercialize with efficiency. Evidently this is not their own fault. They don’t know how to do it because, with honorary exceptions, the rural educational system mentioned previously didn’t provide, and continues not to provide farmers with adequate knowledge. In highly competitive contemporary world it is a necessity that rural producers are extremely efficient.

If the main cause of these farmers’ problems is inefficiency in the rural educational system, it stands to reason that corrective measures should be taken to remove them.

This system must assume the task of rectifying its weaknesses and imperfections on its own. This will have to be done "from bottom to top and from inside to outside”, without waiting for the macro political decisions and additional resources. Some will always hope for "external aid", but it is not likely that governments and others will be able to provide this, and so should be discounted.

The proposed strategy: to replace dispersed, ephemeral and exclusive paternalism-dependent aid with an education-emancipation strategy free from dependency. In other words, to offer rural inhabitants a formal and non-formal education whose contents could assist in resolving their own inefficiencies and problems. This will need to rely less on governmental help which is decreasing and is basically non-existent, for the great majority of the farmers.

Executive proposal: To put this education-emancipation strategy into practice it will be necessary to adopt the following measures:

1. Demand that the agricultural schools and agricultural science faculties train agricultural extension workers that have a real theoretical-practical capacity to correct the inefficiencies of the rural producers which are the main cause of their economic failures.

These schools can’t continue to ignore, while complaining about insufficient resources, that they are wasting in a large part the resources they already have, and training graduates for unemployment. Also, they can’t ignore that, in great measures, the unemployment of extensionists exists because its graduates don’t respond to the farmers and employers needs.

The main reason for this unemployment isn’t necessarily insufficient demand in the work market, but rather the inadequate offering of the agricultural-technical schools and agricultural faculties.

The truth is that contemporary agriculture is crying out for an enormous quantity of extensionists – “improvers of efficiency and solvers of the problems" that exist in the field - however, the education offered to them isn’t able to satisfy this demand.

This occurs, firstly, because "the recipes" taught are not compatible with the "ingredients" that most farmers possess. Secondly, the education received is excessively theoretical, with minimal opportunities for the students to develop their creativity and practical skills.

These schools should teach them to produce, administrate and commercialize efficiently instead of boring them with excessive and irrelevant theoretical content in the classroom. They should also implement a "teaching and learning by doing" approach, preferably based where the problems occur, i.e. in the farms, communities, agricultural-industries and rural markets. These practical skills should be acquired whilst in school and not in the years after graduating at the cost of the farmers’ they support.

2. Demand that ‘fundamental’ rural schools "agriculturalize" and "ruralize" their educational contents; that they put on in place an education that develops the students latent potential and elevates their ego/self-esteem/self-confidence/wish to succeed.

This education should energize and empower students so that they acquire the will and capacity to correct the errors made by rural inhabitants in their homes, farms and in their communities. When graduating from these schools, rural young people should:

• be conscious that they themselves can and must assume greater participation and share of responsibility for the correction of inefficiencies, and as a solution to the problems that occur in the rural environment
• possess the motivation and competence  ( knowledge, skills and attitudes ) which will permit them to assume, with efficiency, this new and fascinating self-developing challenge
• to be capable of looking for, selecting and acquiring new knowledge to stay up-to-date.

3. Demand technical support and / or TARES (Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Services) which depend on extensionists whose profile was described in point 1, i.e. with more pragmatic and proactive aptitudes and attitudes, which would allow them to:

• diagnose the causes of the farmers problems, prioritizing them so that they can eliminate them themselves
• identify the potential and opportunities existing in the farms
• identify and correct the "correctable" inefficiencies for the rural producers and solve the problems, which are solvable by the farmers themselves

Extensionists who;

• identify causes that can’t be eliminated by the rural producers
• require external resources before making good use of the resources that the farmers already have
• instead of solving problems themselves get others to do it

are unproductive extensionists, and, for this reason, are serious candidates of unemployment.

Secondly, these extension agents need to be given the means (vehicles, fuel, roads etc.) so that they can remain in the rural communities. In certain cases it will be necessary for the executives of TARES to adopt drastic measures, such as reducing bureaucratic-operative structures, if they are to offer extensionists the necessary resources.

It is much more productive to maintain 50 well-paid, qualified and field-educated extensionists, rather than 100 badly-paid, unqualified and demotivated ones tied-up in office bureaucracy. This unfortunately, has been happening for the last 25 years in most of the Latin America TARES states.

However, to allow these adaptations to be executed, it will be necessary to "de-state" the present TARES and delegate its administration to private institutions that are not interested in financial gains -for example, the cooperatives and other non-political union entities, who genuinely represent the economical interests of the farmers. Bureaucratic inflexibility of state services and the harmful political-partisan interference, serve to restrict the adoption of health and "efficiency" in state services and rural extension.

Fortunately, many of these corrective means can be adopted by the teachers and extensionists, in many cases without the necessity of additional resources or macro political decisions.

If the rural educational system targets the efficiency and emancipation of its educators and its respective institutions, the main problems of the majority of the rural producers will be resolved. Most importantly, they will be resolved for their own rural families; without paternalism, without dependencies and without humiliation.

However, if these measures are not adopted, without a doubt all the discussion of rural development with equity, human rights, and social justice will continue to be a false show of good intentions; or much worse, a deplorable mockery of the suffering of the rural poor, which the paternalist state has shown and keeps showing that it doesn’t have the capacity alter.