Mr. Mike Robson, FAO Representative attended the 3rd Annual Scientific Workshop as the Chief Guest, at Sylhet Agriculture University (SAU), organized by Sylhet Agricultural University Research System (SAURES) on Monday, 26 January 2015. He was joined by Prof. Dr. M. Golam Shahi Alam, Vice-Chancellor, SAU and Dr. A. F. M. Saiful Islam, Director (Research), SAU, to review the work of 16 research teams work in the areas of food and nutrition security.
In discussing, Mr. Robson emphasized the need for SAU to find its niche in research, and suggested three areas where the University may want to focus – addressing the specific challenges of the nearby haor region; the opportunities from tea cultivation; and the special situation with regard to food security and nutrition, where Sylhet relatively poor indicators of child under-nutrition when compared with the rest of Bangladesh.
As well as finding a local context, he also emphasized the need to work across disciplines - to integrate cropping, fishing, livestock and aquaculture - and to engage with the farmers. Too often technologies can work in a research setting, but for some reason are not taken up by farmers. Generally good ideas – which provide benefits in terms of saving of costs, or time - will be taken up by farmers; the role of research and extension is NOT to force farmers to take up ideas which don’t deliver the kind of benefits which they value! Finally, he emphasized FAO’s full support to this relatively young university, and looked forward to an opportunity to attend future events to review the development of the scientific programme in coming years,
In his concluding remarks, Prof. Dr. M. Golam Shahi Alam, Vice-Chancellor, SAU, highlighted that “agricultural education, research, and extension are the keys to achieving safe and sustainable food production, and nutrition security of the country, in the face of population growth, loss of land, and the impacts of climate change and uncertainty”, and thanked FAOR for his support.