Course Details - Horticulture Sector Development for Emerging Markets
Increasing demand for horticultural products
The rapid rise of the middle class and rising per capita income in emerging economies are leading to increasing demand for healthy, safe and sustainably produced horticultural products. These developments offer new opportunities to farmers and stakeholders involved in the Horticulture sector. However, effective growth requires the transition from highly fragmented and informal market channels to a more professional horticultural sector. A modern domestic horticulture sector may in turn open up opportunities for export markets for horticulture products.
Strengthening horticultural value chains
Modern production practices, value addition activities, value chain governance, viable market channels and a conducive enabling environment are some of the key factors for successful horticultural value chains. If properly enhanced, value chains can bring about opportunities for business development, profit and income generation, employment creation, food and nutrition security and GDP growth.
Implementation in practice
While technical solutions for improving production systems are abundant, in practice many bottlenecks in the horticultural sector are grounded in national policies and are context specific. This therefore calls for appropriate management of improved production and market systems, along with supportive and enabling policies and institutions. In this view, special attention will be given to the role of stakeholders throughout the value chain.
Course setting
The training is job-oriented, experience-based and highly interactive. As a participant in this course, you receive an extensive training where theory is merged with practice. The course topics will be addressed through lectures, discussions, group work, case studies, excursions and field trips. Each of the components of the course has been specially designed to give you sufficient insight in the dynamics of the horticultural sector. And more importantly, this course provides a unique opportunity to learn from a wealth of international experience available among your peers around the world, the course facilitators and invited lectures and shared experiences with other horticulture enthusiasts.
Courses are currently online
Our courses are currently online and follow this format:
- Pre-course assignments for you to get to know WCDI and for us to get to know your work environment and your expectations about the course;
- Interactive plenary sessions where we share content, review assignments and facilitate exchanging experiences. During those interactive sessions we work with a number of online tools like Google Jamboard, Mural and Mentimeter;
- Group work either online or offline where you with other participants address a specific question or do an assignment. Results of these assignments are also shared and discussed during online sessions;
- Individual assignments where you will read literature, watch videos, and do exercises on your own. These assignments are an essential part of the learning and most of them count for getting the certificate. They are meant to introduce or deepen knowledge and make the link between theory and your own situation. These assignments are reviewed either by peers or facilitators.
In some, but not all courses we go on virtual field visits – showing you ‘live’ situations in the field, or with companies or organisations that we collaborate with. We offer coaching trajectories where we support you one-on-one or in small groups to review your individual learning paths in the course and help with any basic questions you may have.
Online platforms: Zoom and TalentLMS
Internet connection is important for the completion of the course. Not sure about the connection in your area? Send training.cdi@wur.nl an e-mail about your situation.
We use Zoom as a facilitating platform for all our online courses. Our courses take place in general over a 6-8 week period to make the workload and time you spend online manageable.
Our online learning system is TalentLMS. Everything you need — our course programme, chatrooms, assignments, background information are in this system. TalentLMS is easy to operate, can also be accessed by your phone and has an on-and offline functionality. We even organise a technical check-in before the course starts, to test your facilities and get familiar with the tools.
Course planning and certificates
The course workload is approximately 16-20 hours a week (2-2.5 workdays).
The exact data of your course will be available 2-3 weeks before the start of the course. If you’ve successfully completed your course we send you a digital certificate.