Capturing Digital Green’s evolution in a new e-book published by Michigan State University

The Michigan State University recently published a new e-book called Innovations in Agricultural Extension. This book emerged from the collaboration of extension experts attending the International Conference on Agricultural Extension: Innovation to Impact in February 2019. The book covers a wide range of topics in agricultural extension, from community outreach to the use of digital technologies. Digital Green staff Pritam Kumar Nanda and Archana Karanam, contributed to this book by authoring a chapter, The World is my Village. 

This chapter summarizes the evolution of Digital Green’s work in the digital extension realm, reimagined from the perspective of a field-level extension agent, Aarthi. Through Aarthi’s experiences and her own professional growth, the reader is able to learn about the technologies that Digital Green has been promoting to empower extension agents and create an ecosystem for an efficient flow of information to the farmers. The chapter describes Digital Green’s community video approach including video production, dissemination, and data management; the use of hybrid channels for sharing information with farmers; and virtual training platforms. The chapter concludes by acknowledging how the rapid changes in digital technologies provide new opportunities for extension agents to gain skills from the formal classrooms, as well as provide farmers the skills to use ICTs for agronomic decisions and market discoverability. 

We invite you to read The World is my Village and share your thoughts with us. Let us know how the use of ICTs and digital extension tools support agricultural extension in your community!