Education

Learning more about organic agriculture and its application is a lifelong process. Consequently, education has many target groups and goals: school children, students, conventional and organic farmers and consumers. An educational programme should address all of these.

The first step is the integration of organic agriculture and general sustainability aspects into the educational curricula. The aim is to educate school children as potential future farmers, but also as future consumers. Classes should integrate practical experience, e.g. in school gardens or through internships. For example the Wai‘anae High School in Hawaii has created a half-acre on-campus certified organic garden.  Students participate in hands-on interactive labs, stimulating field trips and classroom activities. Further, students develop creative entrepreneurial ways to share their vegetables with teachers and families, helping to spread awareness for eating organic. For more details click here.
 
The next step is to support organic agriculture in college and university classes. Agricultural science should teach the principles and benefits of organic and sustainable methods, making the students aware and interested in this field of work.

Besides the educational function, universities as well as other scientific institutes have the important task of conducting research and development in the field of organic agriculture. Topics for research include sustainable farm management, plant production, quality and marketing of organic products, and strategies for the conversion into organic farms. An important aspect is to build networks and to develop exchange and capacity building projects between universities, in particular between developed and developing countries.

One remarkable model is the West African Network for Organic Agriculture, Research and Training (WANOART), a regional network formed by a consortium of five higher education institutions in West Africa. The purpose of the regional network is to facilitate exchange of ideas, encourage collaboration and develop organic production methods which are locally relevant. The ultimate aim of the network and the project is to stimulate the development of organic production in the West African region as a whole. The project involves exchange programmes with European countries and is partly funded by the European Union. In its ERA-NET CORE Organic programme, the EU covers the specific network costs, which occur in EU wide transnational organic research programmes. The remaining costs are borne by the participating member states.

A third aspect of education is the further training of farmers, who either practise organic methods already or are interested in converting from conventional to organic farming practises. For organic farmers continued further education should be a mandatory part of the certification process and for obtaining direct payments. Conventional farmers must be, in the first place, attracted to organic farming and be informed about the offers of training courses. It must be ensured that the training courses are compatible with the working schedule of farmers; in certain instances compensation schemes can be enacted.

In Austria, education plays a very important part in the organic agriculture action plan. The measures include various qualification courses, the training of the trainers, publication of educational material, and the employment of trainers and teachers with the aim to convert more farmers to organic methods. An interesting regulation stipulates that employed farmers, who attend further training, must be exempted from their work. 

In the U.S., some other innovative education tools exist: ATTRA - Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas is a USDA sponsored educational website providing resources and articles on organic and sustainable farming practices.
Further, a one-on-one outreach and technical assistance programme (phone, email, farm visits, conferences & field day excursions, lectures and presentations) has been established.

In general the role of the state in the educational field can be twofold. It can either act as educator itself, through state schools, universities or specialised public agencies. In many instances, educational programmes are, however, offered by non-state actors, such as private public interest organisations, private companies or institutes. In this case, the government can provide institutional funding or direct payments to the participants as compensation for the course fees. In addition, governments must monitor and certify the quality of private education programmes.