Aspects of chemical training of the personnel for organic farming

Abstract

Organic farming is aimed at providing the population with high-quality safe agricultural products and preserving the ecological well-being of agrocenoses and adjacent territories. The implementation of this project is currently associated with a number of problems, for the solution of which educational institutions must train qualified personnel. The authors investigated the aspects of chemical training of specialists necessary for the development of organic farming. The article considers three groups of specialties: 1) farm specialists working with soil and plants (agronomists, soil scientists, ecologists); 2) specialists engaged in product processing (food production technologists, medicinal and essential oil raw materials technologists, biotechnologists, etc.); 3) specialists of laboratories for quality control of raw materials and finished products. Analysis of the labor functions of specialists, the goals and objectives of organic farming, as well as the experience of cooperation of the Department of Chemistry of the Russian State Agricultural University-Moscow Agricultural Academy named after K. A. Timiryazev with agricultural farms for the implementation of organic technology, showed that the most important components of chemical education are as follows: 1) basic chemical training that allows to understand and manage the dynamic processes occurring in the agrosphere; 2) modern instrumental methods of analysis necessary for quality and safety control of raw materials and products, agrochemical diagnostics of soils and water sources; environmental monitoring to assess the impact of agriculture on soil fertility; research activities; evaluation of processing, storage, packaging methods. Laboratory specialists should have the competence to perform physico-chemical determinations of test samples. Other groups of specialists should know the purpose of the methods, be able to interpret the results of determinations. The article presents educational programs of different levels (bachelor’s, master’s, qualification enhancement), which allow to form the necessary chemical competencies.

The Chemical Training of Agrarian Specialists: From the Chemicalization of Agriculture to Green Technologies

“…We showed the ways of modernization of the system of teaching chemical disciplines in agricultural universities in order to make it possible to form these competencies. This is a continuation of our previous studies presented in the works [8,18,35]. We plan to continue working in this direction, studying the long-term results of the ongoing modernization.…”

“…280-FZ "On Organic Products and on Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation" came into force. A paper by Grigoryeva and Belopukhov [35] presented the aspects of personnel's chemical training for organic farming. Attempts to implement green chemistry principles and green economy into agriculture are being made [36,37].…”