Farmers like to watch quality videos, just like anybody else. However, lack of availability and distribution of quality videos on agriculture in local languages constrain farmers in accessing this tool. In this blog, Dr Paul Van Mele and Dr Jeffery Bentley share their experience with use of videos in agriculture and how “Access Agriculture” is making a difference in this area.
Dr Paul Van Mele is director of the company Agro-Insight, focusing on agricultural extension in developing countries. His research on video-mediated rural learning contributed to the establishment of the NGO Access Agriculture, which he co-founded and for which he currently acts as chairman.paul@accessagriculture.org
This blog is very timely and well written to highlight the potential, practice and problems of quality videos in farmer extension work. The narration on entry of champions to pursue this and innovations to make them available and use by farmers in Bangladesh particularly demonstrates great opportunities to effectively reach farmers and especially women farmers in our region. Joining of the local Governments in their production, content agencies to continuously supply edited contents in local languages as far as possible may compliment and supplement these media initiatives for widespread impact.