Making Sense and Consensus for Agricultural Training and Education to Cope With Climate Change Ghadei Kalyan1,*, Rudd Rick D.2,** 1Associate Professor, Department of Extension Education, Institute of Agricultural Sciences Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh-221005, India 2Community Viability Chair of Excellence, Professor and Department Head, Department of Agricultural Leadership and Community Education, Litton Reaves Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA24061, USA *Corresponding author email id: kghadei@gmail.com
**rrudd@vt.edu
Online published on 22 May, 2017. Abstract Widely recognized scientific organizations such as NASA, NOAA and IPCC have increasingly found that there is psychological, social, physical and economic evidence of climate change impacts. However, the authors found little work is being done to incorporate this into education and training regimes for the agriculture sector. In this context, we first need to convince the agriculture stakeholders to reach a common understanding of climate change and its impacts on agriculture and then create appropriate and transferable coping strategies. The resulting changes in attitudes and behaviour will be the basis for making curricula more relevant, developing coping strategies and will lead to more profitable and productive agriculture. The objective of the research was to study the perception and degree of consensus towards climate change and to seek what kind of educational strategy should be created to overcome the scepticism. This paper is based on personal interviews and discussions held with students, scientists, agriculture professionals, general public and extension agents in agriculture. Our study, conducted in Blacksburg, Virginia, reveals that75% respondents perceived the climate change is happening. About 70% of the sample expressed that increasing awareness and training opportunities for social, economic, educational and political institutions will create a workforce skilled to adapt and help mitigate the impacts related to climate change. Top Keywords Agriculture, Climate change, Consensus, Education, Perception, Training. Top |