Emerging Trends, Dimensions, and Models in Agriculture Education and Extension, and Environment in Post-Pandemic Times
In 1997, the Asia Pacific Association of Educators in Agriculture and Environment (APEAEN) was organized in Tokyo, Japan by the participants of a study meeting on agricultural education, which was organized by the Asian Productivity Organization (APO). APEAEN aims to serve as an international alliance for the identification and dissemination of new developments and best practices in the field of agriculture education and environment, to promote exchange of technical and professional knowledge and information among its members, government leaders and the society in general for the improvement of education, research, and extension in the field of agriculture; and to search for new directions in solving problems related to the learning processes involved in agriculture and its environmental determinants in Asia and the Pacific. To date, APEAEN had already organized seven (7) international conferences: the first in Laguna, Philippines (2002); then in Suwon, South Korea (2004); Nueva Ecija, Philippines (2007); Obihiro, Hokkaido, Japan (2009); Bangkok, Thailand (2012),; Bicol, Philippines (2014); and the last was in Tokyo, Japan in 2018.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 international conference did not push through. However, the pandemic opened new ways of doing things, and the virtual mode in conducting conferences has become more popular these days. It also opened a rich opportunity for sharing information and good practices to provide solutions to problems affecting the world populace.
With the current pandemic, agriculture and rural communities, including the agricultural education and extension sectors, have been facing various issues and challenges in their operations. Planetary health, climate change, and disasters had been a huge challenge to the food and nutrition security of all nations. There is also a wide gap in the way science is communicated to our intended beneficiaries – the farmers and fisherfolks, and to our policymakers. To address these challenges, many emerging trends and technological practices are being tried to find good or even best practices to solve existing problems.
Hence, this conference will provide an opportunity for APEAEN members and stakeholders to convene and share knowledge and good practices that can provide solutions to the problems and challenges being encountered by the agriculture sector, especially in this time of the pandemic.
About the Conference
With these as background, APEAEN, the Southeast Asian Regional Center for Graduate Study in Agriculture (SEARCA), and the Wilmar Business Indonesia Politeknik (WBI Politeknik) are convening the 8th APEAEN International Conference via online modality.
Objectives
The 8th APEAEN international conference aims to:
- Provide opportunity for APEAEN members and other stakeholders to share knowledge and good practices on the theme and sub-themes of the conference.
- Find workable solutions to problems on climate change, disaster risks, planetary health, food and nutrition insecurity that have huge impact on the agriculture sector productivity.
- Identify suitable contents to upgrade and update the agriculture, extension education and community development curricula to better address the challenges of the changing time.
- Develop mechanisms to promote networking and collaboration among agricultural institutions on research, development and extension (RDE); and
- Provide opportunity for papers to be published in research journals of partner institutions.
The conference will focus on the following thematic areas:
- Post-Pandemic Models and Contents of Agriculture Education, Extension and Community Development
- Science Communication Diplomacy and Rural Advisory Services
- Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction in Agriculture
- Agricultural Biodiversity Conservation, Waste Management and Planetary Health
- Green Biotechnology and Circular Economy
- Agricultural Digitization, Role of Data and Data Analytics
Intended Participants
APEAEN hopes to gather experts and budding researchers to share the products of their research and studies in the conference. Faculty, researchers, extension workers, agriculture technicians, and graduate students are invited to submit their abstracts of documentary articles and/or research results in English.
Expected Output
The 8th APEAEN Virtual International Conference will gather insights from the experiences and presentations of resource persons and conference participants to identify workable solutions to the problems and challenges being encountered by the agriculture sector, especially in this time of pandemic; to identify content areas that can be integrated into the existing agriculture education, extension and community development curriculum; and develop mechanisms for collaborative RDE among research institutions in the Asia- Pacific Region.