The revolutionary leader Marcus Garvey said that a people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. Rabindranath Tagore also urged us to return to the soil and our roots. On this delta's fertile silt, our ancestors sowed seeds and dreams of future prosperity, so Bangladesh's roots lie in agriculture going back a thousand years.

Viewers of Channel i may know the programme "Phire Chol Matir Tane" (Returning to Roots), in which every year Shykh Seraj takes a group of university students and schoolchildren to farmers and farming, so that the next generation touches the soil of its roots at least once and learns from farmers' disciplined, hard-working lives.

Every developed nation introduces its young people to their history and heritage, including agricultural history. Examples include Whitmuir Organic Farm in Scotland, where children learn about farm production and food preparation, and Underwood Family Farms in Moorpark, 50 miles from Los Angeles.

On a recent work trip to New York, Seraj found an institution giving schoolchildren and university students hands-on farm education: the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture at Pocantico Hills. Set in hills, it combines integrated farming with wide-ranging research. The 80-acre centre is owned by the industrialist and politician David Rockefeller and his daughter; it began as a dairy farm and became an institution for scientific learning about diverse farm production and the taste and quality of farm produce. It houses Blue Hill, an expensive farm-to-table restaurant where a meal costs about 20,000 taka. The farm remained a private Rockefeller property until 1996 and opened for agricultural education in 2004; a 13-member board now runs it.

Education director Renee Marion was teaching ninth-grade students from a New York school, seeing plant life and farming practices first-hand as part of a biology class. Many of their ancestors were farmers a few generations ago, she said, and it is important to connect them with that past. A university student, Lawrence, was taking a nine-month integrated farming course: three months of livestock, three of forestry and then crops.

Students learn about crop production, plant diseases, pesticide use and water management, walking through fields and old woodland. Even in Blue Hill's kitchen, students cut vegetables and cook as part of their day, because, Marion said, the purity of food depends on how produce is cut, cooked and served. Stone Barns visits and practical learning are now part of the regular curriculum of 46 US secondary schools.

Like Stone Barns, Returning to Roots has students cook their own food alongside farm work. Worldwide, policymakers are thinking about making the young generation farm-aware for the sake of food security and safe food. In Bangladesh, the Prime Minister has repeatedly urged students to visit farmers' fields, and for almost a decade Hridoye Mati O Manush has tried to connect the new generation with agriculture through Returning to Roots.

Source: Shykh Seraj. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.