National Agriculture Training Academy (NATA) is the apex training institute for human resource development of officers under the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) for providing training on diversified fields of professional interest in agriculture sector. The academy was established in Gazipur as Central Extension Resources Development Institute (CERDI) on 14 March 1975 as a joint venture of the Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh and that of Japan with the financial assistance of Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). CERDI was established on 20.0 ha of land with a view to co-ordinate the extension activities, conduct training programmes and develop extension resources and minimize the gap between research and extension. Out of 20.0 ha of land there is a farm of about 11.0 ha, office area of 5.0 ha and residential area of 4.0 ha.
CERDI was an outcome of longtime work experience of Bangladesh and Japanese Experts in this country. Bangladeshi and Japanese Experts started collaboration work in the field of Agriculture since 1960, initially with the program of Agricultural Department in the name of “Pak-Japan Agricultural Extension Training Institute”. The program proved as success and covered different agricultural subjects like Extension, Agronomy, Horticulture, Plant Protection, Irrigation and Farm Machinery. It offered different training of six months course to the Thana Agirultural Officers of the Department of Agricultural Extension until 1965. Later on the Institute was named as “Farm Mechanization Training Institute” under an agreement between the Government of the erstwhile East Pakistan and Japan. Union Agricultural Assistants and progressive young farmers were also trained at this Institute in a three-month course. The value of these activities was realizes and it was conceived to institutionalized the program for creating Bangladesh capabilities for running the same on continuous basis in upgrading form. As a result “Central Extension Resources Development Institute” (CERDI) physically came into operation in 1975. CEERDI was operated as joint project of the Government of Bangladesh and that of Japan upto October, 1983. Since then the Institute has been running without any foreign assistance and the same has been recognized and the business have been reallocated under the special Gazette Notification of June 27, 1984. Then CERDI was considering its changed rule according to NAEP and strategic plan decided to work on imparting training to Extension personnel of DAE, Private and public sectors. On 03 April 2013, Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh abolished CERDI and established National Agriculture Training Academy (NATA) as an independent organization of MoA and on 07 June 2014, NATA has been started as a training academy