Promise of plenty
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- Promise of plenty
- Language
- English
- Source
-
Panorama X (10) October 1958
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- Better farming methods may solve the food problem for Pakistan's 80 millions ast acres of luxuriant, carefully culti vated crops and imposing white build ings are rising on the rich lands of the Indus River Valley, northeast of Karachi, to help solve the problem of providing an ade quate and stable food supply for the 80,000,000 people of Pakistan. This is the new Tando jam Agricultural College, and in its laboratories and on its experimental farm Pakistani and American agricultural experts are working to gether to train young men in modern agri cultural methods, and to adapt these methods so that they will be most useful to the farmers of Pakistan. A. R. Akhtar, a graduate of the University of Punjab and an Associate of the Agricultural Research Institute in Pusa, India, heads the staff of 45 professors, researchers and lecturers. To help the expanding staff with the problems arising.from the demands of modern agricul ture and increasing enrollments, seven Amer ican professors from the New Mexico College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts have come to Tando Jam. 68 Panorama These men are a part of the U.S. International Cooperation Administration’s (ICA) Inter College Exchange program. This program, for which ICA has authorized the expenditure of more than U.S. $7,000,000, provides, on a contract basis, for American professors to teach at various institutions in Pakistan and to help the col leges and universities modern ize their curricula while mem bers of the Pakistan college staffs are sent to the United States for advanced training in the fields of education, agricul ture, engineering, medicine and forestry. In the three-year term of the contracts, 78 American profes sors will come to Pakistan, and already more than 29 Pakista nis have gone to the United States. At Tando Jam the American educators, in close cooperation with their Pakistan associates, are working in varied fields. They are helping to develop a research program, to gear the college to give courses for an advanced degree, to revise the undergraduate curricula to make use of the latest educa tion techniques, and to build a modern and effective exten sion service. An active extension service is one of the best ways to get new ideas directly to farmers on their land. ICA has provided mobile audio-visual units for this purpose, and Mrs. L. S. Kudtz of the New Mexico party has trained operators for these vans. Under the auspices of the West Pakistan Agricultural Department, they travel from village to village, teaching as they go. The emphasis in extension services, as in the research and academic study at the college, is on practical aspects of farm ing: increased cooperation bet ween the government and the farmer, and the “how-to-do-it” side of agricultural training. These concentrated and co operative efforts mean more food to supply normal needs, abundant crops and a more de pendable yield from the fields to provide reserves against the caprices of nature. Four-in-One When her girl friend expressed her desire to catch a tall, rich, dark and handsome man, Susie re plied, “You don’t want a man, you want a quartet.” October 1958 69
- pages
- 68-69