Voices from the Last Mile:
In the Eyes, Ears, and Hands of Farmers
 Awaaz.De team with farmers near Kodinar, Gujarat, India
Traditionally, promoting new agricultural practices has consisted of public extension agents making sporadic visits to small farms to propagate the newest university research. However, this top-down approach to farming extension has only reached 6% of Indian farmers, according to the National Sample Survey. Moreover, there’s little proof of the effectiveness of such conventional agricultural extension programmes. (Cole and Fernando, 2014)
More recently, farmers are coming to learn and adopt more productive crops, techniques, and inputs through multiple information channels—with touch-points throughout the growing cycle. From Awaaz.De’s own work and observation of the sector, the trend is clear: the dominant paradigm of government extension workers showing up on farms to tell farmers how to run their livelihoods is waning. Today even marginal farmers are benefiting from multi-modal agriculture extension that reaches them continuously both in-person and remotely, with information both obtained on-demand and pushed at the right times.
In particular, Awaaz.De has helped to put this multi-modal extension approach into practice with tech consortium partners Digital Green, Farm Radio International, and Dimagi on a USAID "Feed the Future" project funded to reach 1.2 Ethiopian million farmers. Across Ethiopia, Digital Green's renowned methodology using pico projectors to screen videos of peer farmers demonstrating best farming practices is reinforced by radio broadcasts, apps for extension workers, and IVR for farmers' Q&A with local experts.
Similarly, during an October 2016 field visit near Kodinar, Gujarat, Awaaz.De found its partner Ambuja Cement Foundation’s (ACF) Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) agricultural support center leveraging various inroads to boost farmers’ crop yields. In particular, ACF provides:
Front-line demonstrations to farmers on ACF’s test plots, such as groundnut planted in dense rows and pheromone traps indicating the presence of damaging pests
An in-house radio program with a broadcasting radius of 12-15 km to convey success stories from the field and interviews with experts
Seven direct phone lines to each of the KVK team’s agronomists who all have different specialization (many of whom have personal relationships with different farmers, and often answer calls into the night)
Awaaz.De’s Streams mobile voice messaging tool with nearly 7,000 subscribers who receive no-cost, timely, short reminders and alerts three or four times per month
 Farmer Ram Rana Ram at ACF demonstration plot in Kantad village
Most notably, ACF was using complementary communications channels to immerse farmers with valuable, timely, and localized information. While live demonstrations of good farming practices are a necessary staple of agriculture extension, ACF understands that farmers require continuous reinforcement to retain this knowledge and ultimately change their practices.
Through radio, about 30% of farming households in ACF’s coverage area receive a steady stream of advice when they opt to tune in. Yet, for urgent and time-sensitive messages—for example, how to react to an unexpectedly heavy downpour—Awaaz.De’s Streams call broadcasting functionality lets ACF record and send messages to any mobile within minutes.
Farmer Buda Vada from Kantad village remarked, “The information of quantity of fertilizer to sprinkle is provided on voice calls. This is really helpful! Initially we used to sprinkle it randomly without any measures. Now we know the different stages of doses."
Then, for any follow-up about information on either medium, farmers can call the ACF staff member specializing in the relevant topic for on-demand recommendations. In any case, these channels are highly accessible to farmers and meet them at their level of comfort, neither requiring literacy nor smartphones.
Moreover, to build demand for optimal farming inputs, ACF employs a diminishing subsidy strategy that catalyses their multi-modal communications approach. At first, ACF heavily discounts the price of a particular input to reduce the risks of adoption for early users. Over time, as other farmers witness the success of the first adopters, demand grows, and ACF gradually reduces the subsidy until farmers are willing to buy at the market rate. For trichoderma, initial demand under 300 kg per year has spiked to over 13,000 kg per year, notes ACF’s Ravi Chauhan.
According to Ram Rana Ram, who’s served by ACF’s initiatives in Kantad village, the greatest benefit he and fellow farmers receive is that they no longer rely on local pesticide dealers for advice.
Ram boasted, “Last week when I visited [a pesticide dealer] he pushed me to buy a certain fertilizer, so I denied, and in response he asked me, ‘Are you from Ambuja?’ Now I can have unbiased and correct information on my agri-purchase!” |
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K.Mohankumaravel wrote ...
Dear Sir
Innovative intervention and All the Best