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GSA building capacity to facilitate climate-smart agriculture
Kaieteur News – The Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA) is currently building capacity to introduce and facilitate climate smart agriculture into its curriculum.
At the same time, the institution is engaged in talks to make the new gender inclusive EnGenDER project mandatory within the curriculum, and to also have a grade attached to it in order for students to graduation from the institution.
On Wednesday, the program which focuses on gender inclusivity in the agriculture sector, was launched at the GSA at Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara and it entails an online course. Equipment was provided to the two campuses of the institution to facilitate the delivery of the curriculum. Since the project is aimed at inclusivity, the Mon Repos and Cotton Field, Essequibo Coast campuses of the institution will benefit simultaneously from the initiative.
Mr. Wilmont Garnett of Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) said at the launch that, “It’s an online 5-6 weeks course, we at IICA headquarters in Costa Rica we’re working with a team, we also have a group in our office in Spain and we are building based on best practices that we would have done in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
The Guyana School of Agriculture at Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara.
“This EnGenDER project is quite interesting, because when we started working with the UNDP Staff, with EnGenDER Ms. Singh in particular and we worked with the Ministry of Agriculture personnel, the Guyana Livestock Development Authority, NAREI and GSA and so, when we think about gender it’s mainly women.”
He noted that the issue is one of the errors made by society and to this end, he said gender is “actually” inclusive. “We thought also with the issues of climate change. Let’s link the gender online course that they will be doing at the Guyana School of Agriculture with the climate change.”
CEO of the GSA, Gavin Ramnarine spoke of the interest of females in the sector. “We’ve noticed over the years the number of the female population at GSA keeps increasing. More women are interested in agriculture. We have a dorm, it’s a residential institution currently, we have 184 students and they cover all regions of Guyana,” he said.
He went on to say that the institution encompasses a complete transect of everyone along the coastal plain, the interior regions and the distant areas. Students choose to attend the institution since it is a residential educational facility.
“Courses are usually 2 years long and they do a lot of practical agriculture. The EnGenDer project is going to assist us in improving our training particularly with climate smart agriculture,” Ramnarine said.
He noted that government and the Agriculture Ministry both play a critical role in enabling students to learn about climate smart agriculture. The institution has a few shade houses; however, they have been subject to temperature variations.
Ramnarine said this year plants at the institution have been dying because of the heat and he posited that only the climate smart agriculture initiative could give the institution, a degree of control in terms of managing the weather conditions.
He extended an invitation to persons to apply and attend the institution since he noted that time progresses, there will be a lot more to offer at the GSA.
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