An expanded meeting on the development of agricultural science was held at the Ministry of Agriculture

An expanded meeting was held in the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Kazakhstan at which the work of the National Agrarian Science and Educational Center was considered as part of the strategic objectives of Elbasy to increase labor productivity and export of processed agricultural products. Minister of Agriculture, Saparkhan Omarov held the event.

The heads of NASEC, agricultural universities of the country, as well as scientific organizations, experimental stations and farms at the scientific and educational center attended the meeting. They informed colleagues and the head of the Ministry of Agriculture about the current situation in the field of agricultural science, and talked about the difficulties faced by Kazakh scientists and their achievements. In addition, proposals were voiced that could improve the situation in the agro-industrial complex and increase the efficiency of agricultural science, as well as measures to optimize and reformatting the activities of the NASEC and its subsidiaries.

In particular, scientists proposed their ideas for solving urgent issues of training agricultural specialists, and employment of graduates of agricultural educational institutions. The question had been raised the material and technical re-equipment of research organizations, increasing the productivity of fields etc.

In addition, scientists are worried about attracting businessmen and agricultural producers to participate in new research, as well as the relevance and practical application of already implemented developments. It was about the difficulties of commercializing research results. As it turned out, Kazakhstani farmers prefer to purchase foreign seeds and breeding animals, instead of engaging in breeding work together with domestic scientific organizations.

Summing up the wide discussion of the state of affairs in agricultural science, the Minister of Agriculture noted that in order to solve many of the issues voiced by scientists, the Ministry of Agriculture had prepared a large package of amendments to the legislation. For example, the new law "On Amendments and Additions to Some Legislative Acts of the Republic of Kazakhstan on the Regulation of the Agro-industrial Complex" of October 28, 2019 provides for the improvement of existing and implementation of new financial instruments, subsidizing business expenses for co-financing research and development, a mandatory requirement of 3-year working out in rural areas for graduates of agricultural universities who have studied in agricultural specialties on a grant basis and etc. At the same time, a new bill is being prepared, which also provides for norms to support the interests and demands of agricultural science.

Saparkhan Omarov also gave a number of specific instructions: to increase research costs, increase the emphasis on practice-oriented student training, taking into account the demand on the labor market, introduce a mentoring system, revise training approaches with a focus on high-tech science-intensive specialties (digital technologies, bioinformatics, molecular biology, biological protection of animals and plants), to develop a mechanism for monitoring the quality of training for agricultural specialists, to create a personnel reserve of scientific investigating organizations at all levels of a scientist’s career, form a pool of young scientists, etc.

In addition, the Minister set the task to conduct a complete inventory of Kazakhstani scientific developments and in the future use only those that are really important and relevant.

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