At Last some kulture for agriculture

It was 2009 when an invasive species took Europe by storm. It was a contingent of agriculturalists, journalists and information and communication specialists who were invited to attend the CTA international seminar on media and agriculture. They were in St Vincent and the Grenadines on the previous year when they witnessed something revolutionary. Caribbean policy makers, politicians, agriculturalists, farmers, technicians, academics, lay persons and media were sitting in one room talking about agriculture. At times the discussion got heated, at times contentions. At various times farmers and officials squirmed uncomfortably in their seats but at the end of the days, Caribbean issues on agriculture were tabled, trashed out and various stakeholders had a better sense of the perspectives of others in the same field which comprised the agricultural industry. I coordinated and facilitated that event which we fondly called ART 2008 - the agriculture roundtable - for the InterAmerican Institute of Agriculture and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute. Recognising it as a successful model for stakeholder engagement, the CTA sought to replicate that at the 2009 Brussels conference to which I coordinated the Caribbean involvement. As part of the build-up to that seminar, various bloggers from the CTA world were asked to write on a topic on agriculture in their region. Drawing from my sense of the Caribbean, I wrote about the devaluation of agriculture in the Caribbean, and erasure of it as a viable form of livelihood by decades of conditioning, schooling, habits and practices - in effect, the loss of the culture of agriculture in the region. Part of the problem of reporting agriculture in the region was that journalists were outcrops of this environment that discouraged interest in agriculture through the formal and informal education processes and this was where corrective action should take place. The title of this blog was Growing journalists from agriculturalists: towards restoring culture in agriculture. The blog articule was taken up by several international policy development blogging initiatives including the Communication Initiative. Now, this blog, AgriKulture, a collaborative effort by four of us, participants in another CT/CARDI/IICA training programme - this one on Web 2.0 applications - is devoted to move a step further towards helping to restore that kulture of agriculture.
In this respect, we feature agridance, agriart, agricraft, agrimusic, agrifashion, agriecology, agriarchitecture and other cultural dimensions of agriculture.
We hope to do so by:
a. celebrating cultural activities that have grown out of agricultural practices
b. showcasing and highlighting agriculture as more than just gruelling field work, but as an active, vibrant and effervescent lifestyle of not just agricultural communities but many others in the society.
c. represent agriculture and its value chain as viable commercial activity d. present agrikultural activities in all its dynamism and vibrancy.
We invite our readers to participate in this and share their own involvement, activities, perspectives and opinions on the kulture of agriculture so aptly represented in the photograph from the official Grenada Tourism site aptly captures and engages the elements we would like to convey.
   -- Kris Rampersad. krislit2@gmail,com. March 3, 2012.
link to page photo

CTA seminar 2009 blog archive: Growing Journalists from Agriculturalists http://annualseminar2009.cta.int/blog-archive/202-blog-art-wk10
CTA Seminar Brussels Briefings CTA Seminar Brussels Briefings