APSAA 亞太永續行動獎(Asia-Pacific Sustainability Action Awards )-Sustainability Action Award SDG4:Silver
National Formosa University 國立虎尾科技大學
Sustainable environment – Mentorship inheritance – Passing down agricultural and regional advantage
“ Sustainable environment – Mentorship inheritance – the program for sustainable regional competitive advantages of agriculture” (hereinafter referred to as “this plan”) from National Formosa University, NFU (hereinafter referred to as “the university”) mainly focuses on connecting agricultural education with industrial knowledge and techniques by developing agricultural talents and integrating regional competitive advantages to foster agricultural development and to further elaborate farmers’ self-values and sense of purpose by promoting sustainable agriculture concepts and agriculture technology and knowledge.
In the aspect of education, the implementation of this plan is to address the counselling for the relatively disadvantageous agricultural educated, to pass the agricultural experience and skills through mentorship inheritance in agriculture, and to implement the various indexes of the program under the themes of “lifelong companionship for agriculture learners”, including food and agriculture education in elementary schools, career exploration in junior high schools, dual-mentorship in vocational senior schools, technological and vocational education in universities (Department of Agricultural Technology) and interdisciplinary general courses (rural live experiment field), virtual accompany education (cultivation academy) and lifelong education after graduation (farmers university and community university). Furthermore, the highlight of this plan is that the Department of Agricultural Technology is founded to meet university social responsibility in local needs with courses planned for professional talent development from second-generation farmers by integrating professional engineering advantages from the university into the courses and combining with industrial and academic talent cultivation plans from Ministry of Education in order to enhance students’ willingness to devote to farming and solve the issues on labor shortage in agriculture in practical way.
From industry perspectives this plan devotes to promoting friendly and organic agriculture and smart agricultural production in order to implement the goals in producing safe food, environment and ecology protection, and the development of sustainable agriculture. We engage both production and consumption ends in participatory guarantee system (PGS) and encourage cross monitoring among producers for collaborative development of sustainable agriculture to improve people’s participation and trust in agricultural produce auditing and enhance market acceptance of friendly organic products. Furthermore, the cultivation area of “eco-friendly farming promotion group” composed by alumnus of farmer university has reached 39 hectares. This plan has also designed an organic group cultivation area of nearly 200 hectares as the demonstration field and introduced interdisciplinary teachers and students in motive machinery, information, electronic, optoelectronic and aerial plane fields and their capacity in research and development to the cultivation area to propose solutions to address current issues with the collaboration between teachers, students and farmers. The results from research and development include unmanned aerial vehicle for farming, portable identification equipment, fast testing equipment for pesticide residue…etc. The goal is to provide students from basic agriculture career options with diversity, to complete and implement university responsibility in local services, and to develop the visions of new business models for agriculture in the future by providing a series of education subsidies, skill counselling and resource connection.
In the aspect of education, the implementation of this plan is to address the counselling for the relatively disadvantageous agricultural educated, to pass the agricultural experience and skills through mentorship inheritance in agriculture, and to implement the various indexes of the program under the themes of “lifelong companionship for agriculture learners”, including food and agriculture education in elementary schools, career exploration in junior high schools, dual-mentorship in vocational senior schools, technological and vocational education in universities (Department of Agricultural Technology) and interdisciplinary general courses (rural live experiment field), virtual accompany education (cultivation academy) and lifelong education after graduation (farmers university and community university). Furthermore, the highlight of this plan is that the Department of Agricultural Technology is founded to meet university social responsibility in local needs with courses planned for professional talent development from second-generation farmers by integrating professional engineering advantages from the university into the courses and combining with industrial and academic talent cultivation plans from Ministry of Education in order to enhance students’ willingness to devote to farming and solve the issues on labor shortage in agriculture in practical way.
From industry perspectives this plan devotes to promoting friendly and organic agriculture and smart agricultural production in order to implement the goals in producing safe food, environment and ecology protection, and the development of sustainable agriculture. We engage both production and consumption ends in participatory guarantee system (PGS) and encourage cross monitoring among producers for collaborative development of sustainable agriculture to improve people’s participation and trust in agricultural produce auditing and enhance market acceptance of friendly organic products. Furthermore, the cultivation area of “eco-friendly farming promotion group” composed by alumnus of farmer university has reached 39 hectares. This plan has also designed an organic group cultivation area of nearly 200 hectares as the demonstration field and introduced interdisciplinary teachers and students in motive machinery, information, electronic, optoelectronic and aerial plane fields and their capacity in research and development to the cultivation area to propose solutions to address current issues with the collaboration between teachers, students and farmers. The results from research and development include unmanned aerial vehicle for farming, portable identification equipment, fast testing equipment for pesticide residue…etc. The goal is to provide students from basic agriculture career options with diversity, to complete and implement university responsibility in local services, and to develop the visions of new business models for agriculture in the future by providing a series of education subsidies, skill counselling and resource connection.