ICTs transforming Agricultural Extension and Education

Infusing new information and knowledge in agricultural systems:

ICTs transforming Agricultural Extension and Education

Goats at a Livestock Research Station in Oman

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Agricultural extension and education was significantly transformed with the introduction of radio broadcasts aimed at rural communities in North America and Europe. During the 1950’s, several Asian countries experimented with radio for rural development. In India a network of medium wave (MW) stations for radio broadcasts were setup to cover almost the entire country. There were issues related to hardware (both for broadcast and reception including power supply for radio receivers), software especially content and its format, skills and connectivity. In India, capacity for generating radio programs was developed at Agricultural Universities and Research Institutes. The All India Radio’s network was linked to these Institutions. I, as an undergraduate student at an Indian agricultural university during my extension course, was trained to produce radio programs. The use of FM (Frequency Modulated) radio in rural areas as “Community” radio has significant value. In India, due to Government policies, this medium has been slow to be used for agricultural extension but is expected to pick up when the use of community radio is opened up for rural areas.

The introduction of television for agricultural extension was also attempted in several countries. In India, there were some remarkable firsts, including the use of television for farm related broadcasts around Delhi. The use of satellites to broadcast television programs across the country and especially to rural areas for agricultural development was also a significant innovation tried in India. The introduction of television also had issues similar related to hardware, software, skills, connectivity and content to that when radio broadcasting for agricultural extension was introduced. However, due to costs, in India, TV program generation was not really linked to agricultural universities and research institutes. This may have been one of the major reasons why TV did not really succeed as much as the radio had for agricultural extension. In theory TV would have had a much larger impact that radio. Unlike radio, lack of electricity in villages in India, lack of TV broadcast coverage in rural areas, a focus on TV for entertainment rather than education and cumbersome production technology were major constraints in the 1980s in India. By the time satellite linked cable TVs. low cost receivers and digital technology, especially cameras, arrived the TV had lost out as a major medium for agricultural extension. In the last five years, the private sector TV has reinvented the use of TV as an agricultural extension tool. In India, the Eenadu Group with their ETV Channel has used digital cameras and a business model of advertisements for farm inputs and rural retail to produce and sustain farm related broadcasts commercially. There still remains a significant potential for local cable based TV programming for rural areas which includes agricultural extension and education.

Computers, digital media such as CD-ROMs and DVDs, digital cameras and camcorders, CD and DVD players also have a significant potential for use in agricultural extension and education. They can be used to target specific local content economically. For example, in Junagadh District of Gujarat, India, a student from a University I used to teach in experimented, as a summer project, the use of CD-ROM based audio content that was a mix of education and entertainment. He generated programmes using a desk top computer with an MP3 recorder and editing software. He provided these CD-ROMs for use by tea-shops at bus stands. He had wanted to link up Tea Shop owners through cell phones with rural service providers and make these Tea shops information hubs for the village. Alas, it was only a summer project and he could not test all his innovative ideas. As I learn, in my opinion, these ICTs have not really been used to full potential, in spite of successful pilots, for agricultural extension and education. The major constraint I believe has been the lack of innovative approaches and the necessary Institutional support needed to generate content.

The Internet and Cellular Telephony as new ICTs have significant potential to be used for agricultural extension and education. At the moment the constraints of hardware, software, skills, connectivity and content, similar to problems faced with the use of radio and television, hamper the use of these new ICTs. However, lost cost computing devices and cell phones, wireless, especially WiMAX, Internet connectivity and WAP (Wireless access protocol) through 3G and 4G technologies will contribute significantly to improving access to information in rural areas. The major constraint will be relevant and useful content.

The use of ICTs, “old” (Radio, Television) and “new” (Computers, digital media, Internet and Cellular telephony) are transforming agricultural extension and education across the world. The old technologies were for broadcasting information and useful for transfer of technology in uniform packages as envisaged for the “green” revolution.

In the new agriculture emerging globally, farmers, especially small holder producers (which include homestead farming, pastoralists, fisher folk and forest dwellers), need a basket of options for their livelihoods. They need information on what to grow, how to grow, when to grow, when to harvest, how to market, what are weather and market forecasts and a host of other information to make farming decisions. They want this information just in time when they need it. The information model now no longer remains a linear model with information flowing from researchers to farmers through extension agents.

There is a new networked model emerging with pluralistic information flows using a wide variety of media, individually and as mixed (video on cell phone, radio through Internet). The channels are not only face to face contacts supplemented with pamphlets, brochures and similar documents but help lines and question and answer services that use cellular telephony with SMS and MMS, the Web and e-mail with audio and video. It is apparent that “new” ICTs will be more used by their unique capabilities to multicast and unicast agricultural information to agricultural communities and groups within the community or individual users respectively.

In my opinion, new ICTs will provide access to a wide variety of information to agricultural communities in new formats such as alerts e.g. for input availability, market prices and weather, answers to questions, “how-tos”, wikis, blogs, results from crop and farm models, diagnostics using expert systems, maps etc. Individual and agricultural communities will also generate and contribute data and information through datasets related to production and marketable produce, answers to queries, blogs etc.

New organizations and Institutions will emerge to manage these information flows. These will include farmer organizations, trade associations, NGOs, consumer organizations, financial institutions etc. The role of traditions organizations in agricultural extension and Institutions will change significantly. They may become organizations that add value to agricultural information flows through collecting, collating, processing and disseminating information using new ICTs as also producing information and knowledge intermediaries that add value in agricultural production chains. These Institutions will need to innovate significantly and rapidly as soon as possible to be useful to agricultural communities.