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By ELIZABETH VUVU
AGRICULTURE must be a compulsory subject in school curriculum as the
young generation is quickly losing the art of living off the land and
seas and is rapidly becoming a “fast-food” generation.
University of Vudal Vice-Chancellor Prof Phillip Siaguru made the
remarks yesterday during the Gazelle forum at the campus’ Kairak Hall.
“We must make agriculture compulsory in our curriculum and begin to
teach it in primary schools up to the university level.
“This is fundamentally vital … these skills must be passed on to the
young generation as they are losing the art of living off the land and
seas and are rapidly becoming a ‘fast-food’ generation,” he added.
Prof Siaguru said in a country where there was no social security, the
basic community lifestyle of working and living off the land must be
organised, protected and sustained.
He said consequently, the sub-themes had tried to capture the spirit of
community independence and food security at local levels and there was a
need to redefine commercial agriculture by developing the skills and
infrastructure that will encourage trade flow once again.
Prof Siaguru said the two-day forum would set the scene by discussing
the national, regional and provincial perspective of the national
agriculture plan.
He said since the 1980s, commercial plantations had been on the decline
due to rising labour and overhead costs coupled with very unstable world
market prices.
“One only needs to drive down to Lassul Bay along the Inland Baining and
see an approximate of about 4,000ha of cocoa and copra just simply
rotting away because of poor road systems,” he said.
Prof Siaguru questioned whether the Government system was capable of
maintaining this commercial production.
He said the reality was that, by organising smallholder system of
agriculture, we provided the key to further growth and increased
livelihood of the rural majority.
 
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