Sunday, February 5, 2023
National Skills Network
  • Home
  • Skill Story
  • Skill Talk
  • News
    • Events
    • News digest
    • NSN Newsletter Archives
    • NSN PDF Newsletter Archives
    • Other Newsletters
  • Resources
    • How To’s
    • Reports
    • E-books
    • Learning Videos
    • Upcoming webinars and virtual events
  • Skill2Jobs
    • Employability Skills
    • Apprenticeships & Internships
    • Jobs
    • Projects
  • About us
    • Our Team
    • Our Clients
    • Our Services
    • Advertise with us
  • Success Stories
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Skill Story
  • Skill Talk
  • News
    • Events
    • News digest
    • NSN Newsletter Archives
    • NSN PDF Newsletter Archives
    • Other Newsletters
  • Resources
    • How To’s
    • Reports
    • E-books
    • Learning Videos
    • Upcoming webinars and virtual events
  • Skill2Jobs
    • Employability Skills
    • Apprenticeships & Internships
    • Jobs
    • Projects
  • About us
    • Our Team
    • Our Clients
    • Our Services
    • Advertise with us
  • Success Stories
No Result
View All Result
National Skills Network
No Result
View All Result

ASCI’s impact on skilling the workforce in agriculture and its sub-segments

by Madhuri Dubey
September 1, 2016
in Industry, Skill Story

With 98% of the sector being predominantly unorganized, training interventions in agriculture call for creating awareness about the need for skilling and upskilling among rural youth. How do we make farming and allied professions aspirational and reduce migration of farmers? Questions such as these get addressed in this Skill Story as Dr Satender Arya, CEO, Agriculture Skill Council of India (ASCI), delves deeper into the impact of their initiatives in agriculture and allied industries.

Agriculture Skill Council of India – ASCI was formed in 2013 as the 13th sector skill council to address the end-to-end skilling needs in a sector that employs more than 50% of the workforce. Though there are large number of people engaged in agriculture, the actual number of people actively involved is on the decline, apparently from 250 million to 119 million over next 7 years. This makes it imperative to look into the need for training, productivity enhancement and better outcomes.

There are three reasons for this phenomenon: First, in the increase in population, by nearly 5 crores a every year affects the agricultural land. It’s like a double whammy when cities expand at the cost of agricultural land leading to sharp reduction in agricultural production.

Second, there is hardly any knowledge transfer through traditional modes. Gone are the days when kids used to spend time with their parents in the fields to learn how sowing is done, how harvesting is done, how things move from farms to mandi (market place). It is a known fact that the Indian agriculture system has been able to reach only 6% of the targeted segment. There is no exposure to the new systems being used and getting skilled is becoming more important and critical.

Third, educating youth in farming practices is a global challenge. One of the ways to make it aspirational, particularly for rural youth is to blend it with technology, perhaps through farm mechanization techniques. The youth can also explore entrepreneurship as not all the people can be absorbed in wage jobs in India. It is better to be earning Rs.10000 to Rs 15000 per month in a familiar environment than migrating and earning Rs 20000 per month in an unfamiliar urban setup.

Agriculture Skill Council of India ASCIImpact of ASCI in agriculture and allied industries

In addition to impacting one lakh people through various programs , we have trained 1,37,000 under the PMKVY scheme and another 23,000 people through RPL for PMKVY. We have developed 116 Qualification Packs (QPs) for various job roles covering agriculture, horticulture, diary, poultry, fishery, apiculture, agro forestry, water management, post-harvest (agri-supply cold chain).

Besides the flagship programs of central government, we are also engaged with the state skill missions which include UP Skill Development Mission, Kerala, Himachal Pradesh State Skill Mission, MoU with West Bengal and Rajasthan – through training and certification. Agriculture is being introduced as a vocational subject from standard 9 to 12 in 533 different schools across 5 states under Rashthriya Madhyamik Siksha Abhiyan (RMSA) Program. B.Vocational programs are being run in 50 community colleges where agriculture programs are taken in at various levels like certificate, diploma, advanced diploma.

When we started our journey, we didn’t have trained trainers, now we have almost 700+ trained trainers, 600 assessors as well. We are operating in all the 29 states in India and also conduct assessments in 11 regional languages. First, we developed the QPs, now we have our model curriculum and we have reached the third stage of developing our training content.

The challenge is to create awareness that agriculture is a highly skilled profession. People involved in this sector are partially skilled, and they need upskilling and knowledge enhancement. Activities like sowing, irrigation, harvesting and post-harvesting are very scientific. It’s not as simple as taking a handful urea or pesticide and sprinkling it. And, the consumers are becoming aware of healthy food options. Dr Satender AryaSatender Arya CEO ASCI 

How farm mechanisation can help

Low cost farm mechanisation, for example, a rice planter can take away the backbreaking pain of labour intensive activity like planting rice. Or, people don’t know how to maintain their tractors and use it smartly with fuel efficiency. Farmers need to be oriented about green house and micro irrigation. They also need to explore high value sub-segments of agriculture like dairy, poultry, fishing. For instance, considering India’s long coastline, how do we bring about a blue revolution that can feed millions.

Handling migration issues

Skill development will increase productivity which automatically translates into income enhancement. In rural areas, if people are ale to get more output and better incomes, they may stop migration. India is all about small farmers with less than 0.5 hectares of land. For sustainable agriculture, it has to be supplemented by some other source of income – which can be dairy, poultry, fisheries – so that the farmers are ensured of regular income. If the monsoon has failed and if there are other sources of income, he can fall back on these sources. So they need to be skilled in allied sectors of food processing,

The agriculture value chain

The decline in numbers in agriculture has a commensurate growth in horticulture, poultry and other value segments. The entire value requires people. People get absorbed in these sub-sectors – it could be sorting and grading vegetables. It’s not just paddy and wheat there are cash crops like sugarcane and cotton. Also there are spices of high valueforming the extended value chain.

Skilling for agricultural exports

Training is an integral part for equipping the workforce to improve the product not only for domestic market but also for export market. For meat export, the animals have to be raised properly. Milk production should be done with high professional standards with maintain hygiene levels. A mango with a spot may be acceptable to us, but not for exports. We need to have top class packaging, storage to ensure the fruits/vegatables are not spoilt and meet international norms. People need to have appropriate skills to reduce wastage or deterioration of quality of the produce.

ASCI – the road ahead

Agriculture is a vast segment, we are trying to reach multiple stakeholders through skill advisory workshops and awareness creation programs. We are able to demonstrate ways in which we can align with the the skilling initiative of the government for training the candidates and trainers through TOT sessions. We are expanding and engaging with new industries that form the agricultural cold chain such as cold store operators and controlled atmosphere operators.

We have to be positive about what has been achieved and what more can be achieved. Everything in skill development cannot be achieved overnight, we need multiple validations, many things are happening for the first time. In fact, the curriculum is designed for the first time. We’ve been one of the best performing sector skill councils, we even got an award for it!

Tags: agri-businessagricultural machineryagricultural QPs and NOSagricultural skillsagricultural training for rural youthAgriculture Skill Council of India (ASCI)agriculture sub sectorsDr Satender Aryafarm mechanisation segmentfarming in rural Indiafood processingNSDCpost harvest skills in cold storageSector Skill Councilstraining in agriculture
Previous Post

Anuna Education strives for superior impact through excellence in skill development

Next Post

Skill Development News Digest – 010916

 

Next Post
skill-development-news-digest - 010916

Skill Development News Digest - 010916

Comments 1

  1. KAMAL KUMAR NAI says:
    4 years ago

    Sir namaste
    Skill india me job chahiye

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe to our E-magazine and newsbytes

  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest
Siemens Technical Academy STA

Siemens Technical Academy (STA), Mumbai – German Dual VET transforms the lives of youth in India

October 8, 2018
10 best online learning portals in India for students and teachers

10 best online learning portals in India for students and teachers

June 26, 2020
Skill development government schemes in India

Top 10 organizations, missions and schemes for skill development, livelihoods and gainful employment

May 29, 2016
BSNL certified vocational internships

BSNL certified vocational internships for engineering diploma students

May 25, 2020
Siemens Technical Academy STA

Siemens Technical Academy (STA), Mumbai – German Dual VET transforms the lives of youth in India

284
Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra PMKK

Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra – PMKK

98
Recognition of Prior Learning RPL

Recognition of Prior Learning – RPL

81
B.Vocational Degree

B.Voc Degree Courses: What do they offer and who can apply?

79
Colombo Plan Staff College (CPSC) Enhancing global competitiveness of TVET

Colombo Plan Staff College (CPSC): Enhancing global competitiveness of TVET

February 4, 2023
ITM Vocational University

ITM Vocational University: Preparing youth for the global economy through work-integrated learning

February 2, 2023
Union Budget 2023

Union Budget 2023 – Highlights on Skill Development, Work-Integrated Education

February 1, 2023
NSN weekly newsbytes

NSN Weekly newsbytes on skills, education and training- 31012023

January 31, 2023

About us

National Skills Network (NSN) captures and shares the positive impact of various training, skill development and vocational education initiatives in India.

To know more about Our Team: Click here

Follow us

Address

National Skills Network – NSN
NSN Digital Solutions Pvt Ltd.
Gachibowli, Hyderabad – 500032
Email us: contact@nationalskillsnetwork.com

Subscribe to our E-magazine and newsbytes

  • About us
  • Privacy Policy
  • Advertise with us
  • Contact

Copyright © 2023 National Skills Network - NSN

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Skill Story
  • Skill Talk
  • News
    • Events
    • News digest
    • NSN Newsletter Archives
    • NSN PDF Newsletter Archives
    • Other Newsletters
  • Resources
    • How To’s
    • Reports
    • E-books
    • Learning Videos
    • Upcoming webinars and virtual events
  • Skill2Jobs
    • Employability Skills
    • Apprenticeships & Internships
    • Jobs
    • Projects
  • About us
    • Our Team
    • Our Clients
    • Our Services
    • Advertise with us
  • Success Stories

Copyright © 2023 National Skills Network - NSN

loader