Agricultural management education in Australia: genesis of a new degree programme in ecological agriculture

Abstract

While the science community continues to ask how its responsibility to society needs to be expressed in the modern world, higher education grapples with issues of its own, including issues embroiled in the perennial tug‐of‐war between principle and economic pragmatism. In this paper, the authors give an account of the origins and development of a new undergraduate course in ‘ecological agriculture’ at a regional Australian university campus. In this story, the tug‐of‐war is dragged strongly back to central issues of purpose and philosophy. Supplementary pragmatic information included are summaries from the feedback from students who have undergone the course and members of the relevant industry obtained through the course evaluations done in the years 2002–2005; moreover, a brief explanation as to how the obstacles faced were met in launching the programme has also been included.

Notes

1. Was known as the Orange Agricultural College between 1975–2000, known as the Faculty of Rural Management, The University of Sydney between 2000–2005.

2. Holarchy is a term used to refer to hierarchy. A natural hierarchy is simply an order towards increasing wholeness such as: particles to atoms to cells to organisms or letters to words to sentences to paragraphs. The whole of one level becomes a part of the whole of the next. Each component in the examples chosen represents a holon, which is in turn a sub‐holon of a greater holon (Wilber, 2000).