Education is an essential public good. Without quality, inclusive and equitable training, countries will not break the cycle of poverty that leaves behind millions of boys, girls, youth and adults. This certainty becomes even more relevant in the face of the impact of the covid-19 crisis. Countries need to recover their economies and overcome the serious consequences caused by the pandemic. Education is key to that.
A space for action that cannot be postponed for this agenda is that of agriculture, rural territories and their integration with urban centers. The materialization of its potential requires innovation and technology to trigger virtuous circles of economic growth, job creation and reduction of the social gap.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, agriculture is a central activity and one of the few that has remained active since the outbreak of covid-19. In the coming years, it will make another qualitative leap, incorporating the advantages of digitization and other technological advances.
This is an inexorable change that requires the training of new capacities, because the digitization of agriculture can contribute to increasing the supply and quality of food within the framework of a harmonious relationship with the environment.
To accompany these processes, it will be necessary for the rural population and the new generations to access adequate training that will allow them to capitalize on the benefits of the “fourth industrial revolution” in the transforming processes of agribusiness.
The digitization of agriculture can contribute to increasing the supply and quality of food
It’s not the technology per se the one that can bring about these changes, but the human talent and the organizations, duly empowered, the ones that allow them to be developed. For this reason, once the digitization agenda has been installed in rural activity, it is necessary to take a step forward so that education allows the rural population to assume a leading role.
In recent years, through a joint effort, international organizations such as the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and its allies in the private sector such as Microsoft, warned of the urgency of addressing the problems of rural connectivity and the development of digital skills.
In the Latin American and Caribbean region there is a 34 percentage point difference in access to connectivity between urban and rural areas, and also limitations in the development of digital skills in the rural population, of which only 17.1% have specific digital skills.
In Latin America, moreover, only 33% of schools have sufficient bandwidth or internet speed. In rural areas, in eight out of 10 countries, less than 15% of educational centers have access to these facilities.
We have to train the leaders who will transform our agri-food systems
The pandemic has particularly affected education, with school closures and dropouts. According to UNESCO, 3.1 million young people, boys and girls, were excluded from education in our region. This overview makes it possible to enumerate the challenges facing an agenda for rural education.
It is a priority to align ourselves with the demands of the future and promote the development of agrotechnical education. For this, it is necessary to modernize educational institutions in rural areas to train qualified resources among the young population, favoring rootedness, links with the productive sectors and the integrating and inclusive development of the territories and their population.
We have to train the leaders who will transform our agri-food systems. Therefore, providing better opportunities through excellent training in agrotechnical schools should be a priority.
This is the way to lay the foundations for a new rurality: better education, full connectivity and a population prepared for an intensive and intelligent use of new technologies, to consolidate the territories as areas of opportunity and engines of economic development.
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