Designing relevant precision agriculture training courses for technical advisors
Abstract
Technical advisers (TA) are considered as key stakeholders in the adoption of precision agriculture (PA) tools by farmers. However, they are relatively poorly trained in PA tools. Existing training courses are generally not really adapted to their needs. This paper explores the opportunity of the competency based approach (CBA) to design a training course on PA that is adapted to the TA needs. In this study, a group of 15 PA experts including suppliers, distributors, users, teachers and researchers identified: (1) the reference professional situations (RPS) that TA may experience; (2) the PA technologies they may be expected to handle; and (3) the skills required for each PA technology and each RPS. These proposals were validated and completed by a larger group of 90 experts. The results of this study showed that CBA was a relevant approach for designing training modules on PA for agricultural professionals.