EDUCATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FARMING IN TWO AREAS OF ZAMBIA

EDUCATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FARMING IN TWO AREAS OF ZAMBIA

Abstract:

During the last ten to fifteen years there has been a substantial increase in ducational facilities in developing countries, in order to provide skilled manpower for both urban and rural development. There is now a need to see if education ha3 contributed to this development, not only at the national level, but also in the villages spread throughout the rural areas. This hesis is the result of a quantitative investigation into how education has contributed to the improvement of the farming of the 239 family cultivators surveyed by the Universities of Nottingham and Zambia Agricultural Labour Productivity nvestigation (UNZALPI) in the Mumbwa and Katete districts of Zambia. In this study, education has been defined broadly to include schooling, farm training, contact with the agricultural extension service, non-farm employment and general experiences. The contribution of these educational experiences, both directly to production and indirectly through the stages of the process of the adoption of improved practices, was examined.The three main findings of the study can be summarised as follows : (i) At the level of farming in the survey areas, motivation was found to be an important pre-condition for the improvement of farming. The schooling of the cultivators contributed to this motivation, but its contribution appeared to be constrained by community values. Those who had been employed in urban or rural areas were not more often than the others motivated to improve their farming; (ii) The extension service, although it was regarded as the main source of the knowledge, skills and management needed for the improvement of farming, was notregarded as being of significant help in this respect. Consequently, the cultivators’ opinions of this service were low, as was the morale of the staff. The staff were not entirely to blame for this, and the service must be reorganised in such a way as to raise both the morale of the staff and their status in the rural community;(iii) If school-leavers are to be persuaded to return to their villages in order to commence farming, they must see that farming in a village situation can be profitable. This means that higher priority must be given to adult education : both motivational education and farm training. School-leavers must also be given every assistance to fulfil their aspirations for a higher standard of living if they are to be prevented from migrating to urban areas, or from settling back into traditional patterns of behaviour.

EDUCATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF FARMING IN TWO AREAS OF ZAMBIA

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