Faculty of Agriculture, Sriwijaya University Indonesia

1. Agricultural Higher Education Revitalization as a Positive Response to FutureChallenges Faculty of Agriculture, Sriwijaya UniversityIndonesia Suparman SH Kusuma

2. Indonesian Agricultural problems and challenges • Farmers’ welfare more than 40% population live in the sector • Food security struggling for self sufficiency of six main commodities: rice, maize, soybean, sugar, meat, milk • Land conversion high rate of land conversion, from high productivity agricultural lands to non agricultural uses • Disinterest of youngsters to the sector + 77% of farmers are of elementary school background

3. Floods, draughts and natural disasters • Pests and diseases • World wide hot issues issues on smog, greenhouse effects, environmental damage and degradation

4. Agricultural education problems and challenges Input • Highly affected by agricultural conditions • Competitiveness (less competitive) • Quality (not first priority) • Gender (more female) Process • Human resources (imbalance quantity and quality of lecturers and technicians) • Curriculum (less market oriented) • Learning system (less practical) • Facilities (less supportive) Output • Competency (?) • Relevance (?) • Soft skill (?)

5. Agricultural education revitalization • Restructuring study program from too specific to more general. The issuance of Decree No. 163/Dikti/Kep/2007, reorganized various specific study programs in faculty of agriculture to be two more general study programs, Agrotecnology/Agroecotecnology and Agribusiness. • Restructuring curriculum from content based curriculum to competence based curriculum. • Improving learning process from teacher centered to student centered learning system. • Accommodating student soft skill development in the curriculum and learning process • Improving agricultural laboratory facilities • Supporting and facilitating students’ entrepreneurship capacity development

6. Agricultural education revitalization in Sriwijaya University • Following up all revitalization programs coordinated by Directorate General of Higher Education, Ministry of National Education. • Building image through various activities and give youngsters an appropriate view of agriculture. • Developing competence based curriculum accommodating, as much as possible, local excellence and local wisdom • Making use world wide hot issues and challenges as opportunities to strengthen and increase the existence and contribution to the society and environment • Improvingand renewing laboratory facilities, indoors and outdoors. • Improving and developing student centered learning and student soft skill development systems.

7. CONCLUSION • Revitalization of agricultural higher education has to some extent increase the interest youngsters to faculty of agriculture. • The emergence of worldwide issues on smog, global warming, food crisis and bio-fuel has inevitably made people pay more attention to agriculture where they can hope for solutions. • Following the agricultural higher education revitalization organized by DGHE , Faculty of Agriculture Sriwijaya University is continuing revitalizing itself toward being one of the bests agricultural higher education in the country. • The result has been quite promising as shown in the increasing number of applicant, better academic atmosphere, better appreciation from stake holders and better public image. • Agriculture is not just feed the world. Agriculture is for Food, Feed, Fiber, Freshness, and Fuel. Lets be proud of the Five Fs