EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND TRAINING IN COMPANIES

Classical agriculture and forestry science has been built around the ecological, biological and economic importance of that ‘entity’. The social, cultural and environmental aspects of agriculture and forestry grow in importance. This requires agronomists and foresters to ‘think outside the box’, learning to deal with agriculture and forestry issues ‘outside the rural areas and forest’ and that is one challenge that is yet to be fully integrated into agriculture and forestry education (Temu et al, 2006). In the times of socio-economic system integrations, liberalization of socioeconomic processes and population growth, the importance of agrarian and rural system developments and rational use of resources, primarily agro-ecological and hydro-potentials, depends primarily on well educated human resources that have adequate knowledge, skills and competencies. Knowledge and intellectual capital are preconditions for development of competitive agricultural-food industry and for companies that operate in this industry. Developed intellectual capital provides companies with possibilities to ensure additional value to products and services and that way to become more competitive at the market. Education, professional development and training of human resources in companies can ensure the best balance between the human resource structure and the organizational structure if the entire range of requirements expressed by the latter is taken into account in terms of quality and qualification of human resources. The very nature and substance of market economy imposes many functions and obligations for the companies, in terms of education and training. On the one hand, market conditions require from companies to react quickly to all changes in production requirements in terms of human resources, through a system of preparations, professional developments, vocational retraining and training of human resources. On the other hand, companies have to provide the employees with the possibilities to undertake trainings and education in accordance with their personal ambitions, desires and interests. Therefore, this results in a need to have flexibility in the systems of education, professional development and training of human resources, as well as its ability to quickly adjust its content, methods and organizational forms to the production requirements and labor market situation. This paper relates education, professional development and training experiences in companies’ in order to initiate discussions about the way forward.