Video-mediated farmer-to-farmer learning for sustainable agriculture

From an innovation system perspective, having videos that serve or are used by many (known and
unknown) service providers is a great achievement. It also means there is a need to “let go” and
that monitoring of the spontaneous dissemination and use of video discs at a global scale will
always be an approximation that depends on people’s willingness to provide feedback as they have
neither ties nor accountability to the project trying to monitor the video use.
Monitoring video use is possible, as shown by Digital Green and AfricaRice, but keeping track of
videos that reach farmers in off-line modus implies huge monitoring challenges.
“It is very difficult, as you can imagine, monitoring the use of the videos by other
organizations. Currently, I am aware of the following organizations (outside of STCP and
partners) who use them: Technoserve Tanzania (translated into Swahili); Armajaro Ltd (a
cocoa buying company for use in Nigeria and Ghana) and ECHOES/Winrock International
(a private sector funded project in Ghana)”
Sonii David, IITA, Ghana
Future efforts to stimulate a global exchange of farmer training videos may include a mix of the
above-mentioned types of videos, and elements of the various models, keeping in mind all the pros
and cons. Before presenting some scenarios as to how a web-based exchange platform might take
shape (Section 7), let us take a closer look at the range of agricultural training videos available on
the internet and explore who should be the target of such a platform.
5 Agricultural videos on the internet
Literature, surveys conducted by AfricaRice on gender and media in nine African countries, and
results from the on-line survey suggests that very few farmers in developing countries use the
internet, whereas extension service providers do access the internet in search for quality training
materials, information and networking. Knowing who uses which ICT technologies is crucial as the
intention and capacities of the people deploying them are key to the success of any
ICT4Development intervention, as illustrated by the following quote.
“As we conducted research projects in multiple domains (education, microfinance,
agriculture, health care) and with various technologies (PCs, mobile phones, customdesigned
electronics), a pattern, having little to do with the technologies themselves,
emerged. In every one of our projects, a technology’s effects were wholly dependent on
the intention and capacity of the people handling it.”
Kentaro Toyama, University of California (2010)
5.1 Internet use by farmers
In Ghana, only nine of the 200 rice farmers interviewed had used the internet before, four had used
it on their own, while five had used it with assistance. They used it for social networking, marketing
their produce and accessing news. Only one farmer used the internet to obtain information on rice
(Parker Halm, 2010).
Various national and international organizations have funded telecentres in Africa. In Tanzania,
farmers do not use and benefit from the potential that is offered by telecentres in terms of
information access. Most users are students, and civil servants working at district headquarters.
Video for farmers Agro-Insight, October 2011 page 28