Teaching Sustainability in Agriculture to Students of Development

The Post Graduate Programme in Development, at Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India aims to nurture reflective development practitioners. The programme curriculum is designed to impart students the skills to employ multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches in understanding, analyzing, and formulating strategies to overcome development challenges. The University offers a course on Sustainable Agriculture and Development to equip students of development with ideas of sustainability in agriculture. The 2030 Agenda for sustainable development has duly acknowledged the pivotal role of agriculture in addressing hunger and poverty. Concerns of sustainability of agriculture arise out of the need to nurture and promote agricultural systems, technologies, and practices that are environmentally benign, socially inclusive, and economically viable. Education for sustainable development identifies five priority action areas and various competencies that universities must address through their academic programmes. The Sustainable Agriculture and Development course at Azim Premji University is aligned with these priority areas and competencies. The pedagogy in the course recognizes the knowledge-practice-policy interconnectedness. Competencies for sustainable development are nested within these broad dimensions. This chapter aims to capture the pedagogical experience of teaching sustainability in agriculture to students of development.