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

Potential. Apart from offering an excellent experimental ground on structuring and monitoring a
web-based platform, the videos along with the statistics and farmer feedback could offer a good
starting point to make decisions for better quality scripted videos that will be suited for global
sharing and use by a wide range of service providers. The most popular videos so far appeared from
following classes: animal care; seed treatments; herbal medicine; compost and soil; fodder
conservation and success stories.
5.5 Audio-sharing websites
WRENmedia (www.wrenmedia.co.uk) produces the online magazine New Agriculturist since 1998.
The magazine covers agricultural and rural development/livelihood issues, both policy and
technical, relating specifically to developing countries. Whilst many articles are researched and
written by the WRENmedia team, some are written collaboratively with scientists and development
practitioners and others are contributed by an international team of freelance science writers. A
network of southern print correspondents provides news and feature articles for the magazine, as
part of WRENmedia’s capacity building programme for better science reporting. The English
version of New Agriculturist is produced on a CD-Rom each year and sent out to those without
good access to the internet. The first edition of New Agriculturist in French (www.newag.info/fr/index.php)
was launched at the end of April 2011.
For 15 years, WRENmedia has also produced Agfax, a monthly radio service for Africa with an
emphasis on agricultural science and innovation. Interviews and features are commissioned from a
network of 21 trained and motivated local journalists, some of whom have shown interest in
becoming bi or multi-media and could be trained to develop video scripts. Millions of listeners in
Africa tune in to Agfax audio, which are broadcast by a network of 80 radio stations across the
continent. Reporting 'from the field' is a challenge for many African journalists, because of resource
constraints. By sharing experiences from one country to another, Agfax helps to foster
development across the continent. The website hosts downloadable audio files, along with full
transcripts in Word or PDF format (http://www.agfax.net).
CTA has produced five Rural Radio Resource Packs on a variety of topics related to agriculture and
rural development since 1991, but it stopped doing so about two years ago. Each pack contained
about ten 3-6-minute audio files to be re-packaged and broadcast by local radio stations in African,
Caribbean and Pacific countries (ACP). Additional technical information was provided along with
transcripts of the radio programs. The archives remain accessible but no new content is produced
(http://ruralradio.cta.int).
Video for farmers Agro-Insight, October 2011 page 34