Science and Technology Mailing List Archive

["James BISCOE" <<address removed>>]

Paul Mundy has brought an important area of discussion about extension
outreach into the arena of this consultation. Thank you!
He is right that there is enormous scope for the use of media not only as
outreach to farmers but also in the delivery of training and support to
field staff as well.Radio is a powerful and widely used medium which could
be more widely used. In the 1980's when I worked in this area in Zimbabwe
the greatest difficulty we faced was feedback from farmers and  field staff.
We went to great lengths to set up a radio listening group pilot project
largely to meet this deficiency. Today  mobile phones are  surprisingly
commonly used despite the difficulties with signal coverage in some
countries. It is a profitable technology which I have seen spreading like
wildfire.
Something often not used as much as it could be is the press. The press
tends to suffer from the intercession of journalism between the originator
of material and the readers with sometimes less than desirable results.
However, a college in Canada many years ago went as far as buying
advertising space to use for its outreach material so that it controlled the
copy exactly. Newspapers penetrate rural areas surprisingly quickly in my
experience. The mail usually works albeit at its own pace so you need to
adjust the timing of delivery to make best use of it.
There are also pitfalls of visual literacy, literacy and perception but
great strides were made in this direction by the use of photonovelas which
we certainly used to good advantage in areas where information is not
rapidly changing.
DCFRN (Developing Countries Farm Radio Network from Canada) is still going
and, I believe, in the throes of reinventing itself so could be susceptible
to some input.

A cardinal rule which we learned the hard way, do not use an abstract
representation for anything which you can show in reality. Why use a photo
of a maize cob when maize cobs are right there?

There is good scope for improving the dissemination through using media. I
doubt that the internet yet penetrates villages sufficiently to be useful as
a mass medium. For staff communications even if it means using expensive
mobile phone links, e mail can be excellent. DfID could well include use of
media into the support offered to agricultural extension and research
functions.
Thank you
JAmes Biscoe
17/5/04
1030hrs


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