Interactive human platform :

Move to boost Southern agriculture

Ishara MUDUGAMUWA

The Interactive Human Platform (IHP) Policy on agriculture development in the Southern Province was jointly introduced by the Agriculture Faculty of the Ruhuna University and the United Nations Development Fund Art Gold project, said Head of the Agriculture Economics Department L M Abeywickrame.

IHPs are defined as "platforms that facilitate interaction among a range of academic, research, policy, administrative and political activists, who deliberate upon the relationships among their knowledge and perceptions about development issues and generate innovative ideas and strategies to improve the well-being of the people," he said.

The main objectives of the introduction of the IHP policy are providing a forum for sharing knowledge and experience among stakeholders, avoiding repetition and overlap of activities to minimize wastage of resources, sharing resources among stakeholders, economizing on costs, facilitating exchange of mutual assistance among different organizations to achieve the development objectives, identifying and exploring of underutilized and untapped resources, utilizing region's resources to maximize the output, facilitating constructive dialogue among stakeholders, providing a platform for researchers, policy makers and other stakeholders to stage their findings and views, said Prof Abeywickrame.

He said that though agriculture researchers, academics, private and civil society members are involved in generating new knowledge and innovations some of these innovations are limited to academic publications and presentations at seminars and conferences.

There is also a possibility of duplicating efforts, because there does not exist a mechanism to coordinate such efforts.

In IHP it is intended to identify persons involved in agricultural research and development and bring them under one roof to allow them to deliberate their knowledge, experiences and findings.