Abstract
For the past 20 years, seasoned agricultural professionals with a holistic view of the world have recognized the need to add ‘a systems approach’ to the conventional paradigm in agricultural education, research and development. To maintain and strengthen people and institutions evolving with this point of view, young professionals need the chance to undertake a formal programme of education steeped in the philosophy, theory and practice of systems thinking.
One university responding to this need was the Asian Institute of Technology, an international postgraduate institution in Bangkok, Thailand. There, over the period 1986-’91, Agricultural Systems has evolved as a recognized field of study with a programme of coursework and research leading to the degree of Master of Science.
The experience gained from this initiative suggests that the systems dimension can be added to a student’s thinking within the 20-month period for the degree. Nevertheless, this remains superficial unless students have a powerful grounding in the provisional facts of natural science, a physical awareness of farming as a human activity system, and a practical grasp of the social, economic, political and other forces that enhance or inhibit change in the progress or regress of agricultural systems.
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Gartner, J.A. (1993). Postgraduate education in Agricultural Systems: the AIT experience. In: de Vries, F.P., Teng, P., Metselaar, K. (eds) Systems approaches for agricultural development. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2842-1_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-2842-1_30
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