2009 Volume 4 Issue 1 Pages 41-49
Since its founding in 1909, the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) has focused its instruction and its research and development (R & D) activities on developing component technologies to support national agriculture programs and government productivity goals. In the last decade, R & D at the UPLB College of Agriculture (UPLBCA) has focused on the accumulation of knowledge on environmentally benign component technologies and methodologies that will increase the efficiency of applied inputs in crop production.
The UPLB Graduate School currently has 906 students enrolled in 92 graduate degree programs, including PhD programs. The most popular programs in terms of numbers of students are Environmental Science, Development Management, Community Development, Development Communications, Forestry, Agriculture, and Agricultural Economics.
At the undergraduate level, the current Bachelor of Science in Agriculture (BSA) program, with sustainable agriculture (SA) as the overall philosophy, was first implemented in 1997. It aims to educate students in science-based agriculture, giving them a holistic understanding of agricultural sustainability, and to prepare them as socially committed professionals. An innovation in the present BSA curriculum is allowing students to choose among a thesis, major (farm) practice, research internship, extension and community internship, teaching, and agricultural entrepreneurship.
UPLBCA's shift from mainstream to SA was not an easy task. At the national level, SA is not the mainstream model of agricultural development, because trade policies support liberalization of trade in agriculture, which reinforces the primacy of the market-driven agriculture that rewards short-term productivity gains rather than long-term sustainable production.
At the university level, advocates of SA have to face various forces, problems, and obstacles encompassing the emotional and personal, institutional, administrative, policy-based, and funding-driven, and scientific biases.
Looking forward, UPLBCA is continuously fine-tuning and enriching its curricula towards SA. It has also explored the possibility of offering other integrative fields in the BSA curriculum, such as agricultural systems (including policy formulation and analyses), agroforestry, urban/peri-urban SA, and environmental agriculture.
