Sender:
"Moderated conference on rural advisory services for family
farms: 1-18 December 2014" < [log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 17 Dec 2014 13:11:29 +0100
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This is Ehsan Masoomi, again.
Rural consultancy services in Iran are mostly economic oriented and the goal is national production increase or farmer income. Rural consultancy services should consider other aspects of farmers life and, even if the goal is increase of farmer’s income, rural economy development as a whole must be considered and not just agricultural economy.
It is interesting that this important issue is ignored even in university programs. As an example, rural economy is not included in rural consultancy services in Iran. In reality, most rural consultancy services are established for agricultural economy although their name is simply rural consultancy services responsible for whole package of services.
With the help of rural development officers (not only agricultural) in already existing consultancy centers, the rural development plan can be enhanced and improved significantly. Iran needs both rural development plan in national scale and meanwhile a plan for accurate investigations in rural scale. From another hand, expert rural development officers are needed to perform research about the contribution of small farmers in rural development plans instead of agricultural economy development plans.
University should educate fresh graduates in rural development programs to help in implementation and execution of research-based rural development plans. With regard to the above, rural advisory services must focus on multi-functional agriculture and development of new opportunities rather than working on farm only. With stress on multifunctional agriculture, farmers will gain all aspects of agriculture and rural economy also will be devolved in addition to agricultural economy.
Ehsan Masoomi
Master Student in Agricultural Engineering
Department of Agricultural Extension & Education
Shiraz University,
Iran
e-mail: masoomi_ehsan (at) yahoo.com
alternative e-mail: e.masoomi68 (at) gmail.com
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