The Power of TV in triggering feedback through Mobile Phones

In recent years, research and development institutions working with farmers have initiated successful agricultural practices that have the potential to increase food security, reduce poverty and help mitigate against the effects of climate change. Despite the increasing number of successful agricultural initiatives, it is clear that most of them are still only ‘islands of success.’ Whether the potentials and spread of these initiatives are realized will depend on levels of investment, appropriate policies and the development and promotion of new methodologies for scaling up and mechanisms for receiving and providing feedback. For many years, national governments have been the sole provider of extension services to farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa. Yet despite decades of investment in and experience with public extension programs, evidence of their impact upon agricultural knowledge, adoption and productivity remains limited. Furthermore, the extension services themselves have been criticized for high costs, problems of scale and lack of accountability. The linear model of extension that was used was criticized for transferring messages from researchers in research institutions, ministries of agriculture to extension workers and finally to farmers and hence has limited capa city for feedback. Furthermore the messages can get confused or misinterpreted along the way. Secondly, there has been a decline of government funding to extension services in recent years. In Kenya, over 5 million small scale farmers rely on around 5,500 agricultural extension workers for advice and information. But with a ratio of one extension worker to over 1,000 farmers, Kenya’s farmers aren’t getting the servicesthey need. New technologies to disseminate information to farmers beyond face-to-face interaction are therefore crucial to filling this gap.

---

• View source