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Moderated conference on rural advisory services for family farms: 1-18 December 2014

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Thu, 4 Dec 2014 14:41:17 +0100
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My name is Harutyun Gevorgyan. I am an extension specialist in Armenia, and PhD researcher of agriculture extension education. I got qualifications about advisory systems and Extension education in the USA, Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and in the Netherlands. Currently I am doing my PhD in the Tuscia University, Viterbo, Italy.

 

I want to respond to questions 4.2 and 4.4. [i.e. "4.2 What are the current gaps in rural advisory services for smallholder family farms?" and "4.4 Are there regional specificities regarding rural advisory services for family farms?"...Moderator].

 

There are so many questions and problems in development of the Armenian agriculture extension education system, but I would like to write about one. The question is that before collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) there were very large collective farms in our rural areas (we called them Kolkhoz and Sovkhoz) which belonged to the rural community and villagers were working there and getting a salary.

 

But after collapse of the USSR, the Government of Armenia decided to privatize the agriculture land and distributed very small pieces of lands among all villagers. And then we started to have difficulties because, for example, a teacher of the rural school, who has never dealt with agriculture before, got a piece of land, became a farmer and without any knowledge started to grow plants. In my opinion, it has great negative impact of agriculture development, because if farmers do not have any education, they cannot grow crops or keep animals. And the advisory system cannot fill that gap and start education from the beginning.

 

So now my question is what shall Government do? Is there any experience between participants of this e-mail conference to give me advice? Can the Government create a special policy to allow farmers to work in agriculture only if they have a certification from the advisory system?

 

Looking forward to have your comments and discussion.

 

Harutyun Gevorgyan

Humphrey fellow and Erasmus Mundus PhD researcher

Università degli Studi della Tuscia

Via San Camillo de Lellis, 

Viterbo, 

Italy

Phone: +39 0761 3571

www.unitus.it/

http://ip.cals.cornell.edu/prof-dev/hhh/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/harutyungevorgyan

e-mail: hg349 (at) cornell.edu ; h_gevorkyan (at) yahoo.com



[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/264776/  



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