Anat Levy April 21, 2017
Hosting
about 1,200 students each year, AICAT has produced more than 16,000 alumni.
In the coffee, rice and rubber farms of
Vietnam’s Central Highlands, 24-year-old Trung Nguyen has seen all too many
relatives develop cancer, due to the unfettered use of chemical pesticides. As
he nears the end of a 10-month agricultural training program in Israel’s Arava
Desert, Nguyen is determined to bring what he has learned back home, to both change
this stark reality and modernize farming techniques in the local Buôn Ma Thuôt
community.
“We cannot depend on chemical
agriculture anymore – it’s not good for our health. We also learn about
sustainable agriculture. We would like to apply this kind of growth back in our
country.”
Nguyen
is a participant in the diploma program at the Arava International Center for
Agriculture Training (AICAT), a learning institute in the central Arava Desert
community of Sapir and under the jurisdiction of the Central Arava Regional
Council. Established in 1994, AICAT operates with the support of the Foreign
Ministry and the Agriculture Ministry, and benefits from funds raised by Jewish
National Fund-USA.
Hosting about 1,200 students each
year, AICAT has produced more than 16,000 alumni who are determined to adapt
the skills they have learned in their communities back home in Africa and Asia,
according to Noa Zer, the regional council’s resource development director.
For the duration of the Arava’s
agricultural season, from about August to June, the students come to AICAT to
hone both their theoretical and practical skills, all the while living with
farmers in the region and earning money by working with them, Zer explained.
Not only do they study new cultivation techniques and agricultural
technologies, but they also learn a wealth of management, marketing and
business skills in the program.
“To be a farmer today is to be a
businessman in the field of farming,” Zer said. “The students are getting
valuable knowledge; they are getting practical training.”
While most of the students come to
participate in the 10-month diploma program, about 20 people each year have now
been signing up for a master’s degree track – an option launched two years ago
in collaboration with Tel Aviv University, Zer said. In addition to offering
the diploma and master’s degree programs, AICAT hosts groups for short-term
groups in advanced agricultural studies.
No matter which course the students
choose, Zer stressed that their exposure to innovation and the spirit of the
Arava Desert continues to guide them when they return home.
“The main lesson that they learn in
the Arava is making the impossible possible,” she said. “It inspires them.”
Paired to work and live with
individual farmers, each student in the diploma program must formulate a mini
project related to the crop cultivated at that farm, and present the results of
the assignment at the end of the 10-month program, explained one of their
teachers and a farmer herself, Maayan Plaves Kitron.
“The most important thing that they
gain here is the option or the ability to think not in a traditional way, like
their parents do,” said Plaves Kitron, who is the horticulture coordinator at
the Yair Research and Development Center (Central and Northern Arava R&D
Center).
“You
see the change,” she said. “They take risks and they dare to think differently
from the rest of the people around them. This is what I’m trying to encourage
with them, to open their minds and [make them] think a bit different. Even if
you grow rice, try to think how you can grow it and improve your crop.”
In order for more students like
Nguyen to come learn at AICAT, JNF-USA is providing financial support for an
ongoing expansion project to double the capacity of the program’s campus. As
Earth Day approaches this April 22, the organization is including the training
center among its top priority fund-raising efforts. Already by next year,
JNF-USA executives said they hope to see 2,000 students training at AICAT, and
5,000 in the near future.
Hanni Arnon, the executive director
and founder of AICAT, echoed these sentiments, describing the training center
as “a bridge between peoples,” where both agriculture and the human spirit know
no borders. “They learn here in the Arava that if you will it, it’s not
a dream,” Arnon said. “With faith, a pioneering spirit and ingenuity, you can
make the desert bloom.”
While AICAT participants may gain
enormous advantages as they head back to manage their farms at home, Zer
pointed out how Israel also benefits significantly from hosting them, even if
temporarily.
“We introduce them to Israel. They
live on farms with farmers,” she said. “They really see the real face of
Israel. They are the best ambassadors of the State of Israel you’ll ever find.”
