{"id":1765,"date":"2020-06-24T11:48:43","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T11:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/4563-2\/"},"modified":"2024-01-11T06:26:41","modified_gmt":"2024-01-11T06:26:41","slug":"4563-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/4563-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Video-based Agriculture Extension in the Time of Physical Distancing"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected all walks of life. In India, despite some relaxation for agriculture activities during the lockdown, farmers all over the country faced challenges in selling their Rabi<\/em> produce (winter agricultural season),\u00a0especially\u00a0access to markets and the drop in prices.<\/p>\n

In Jharkhand, Rabi<\/em>\u00a0is not\u00a0a prime cropping season, and farmers here worried about the upcoming Kharif<\/em>\u00a0(crops sown in the monsoon);\u00a0specifically about access to and availability of\u00a0inputs and fertilizers for Kharif<\/em>\u00a0crops.<\/p>\n

Through rapid surveys early in the lockdown<\/a>, Digital Green reached over 250 smallholder farmers across Jharkhand to get a pulse of the situation with\u00a0the purpose of figuring out the means and ways we could continue supporting them in a more targeted manner. The findings from the survey conducted\u00a0in April 2020 were discussed with our partner JSLPS and the team brainstormed on alternate ways of providing agricultural extension support to the farming community.<\/p>\n

Through the surveys also found that the farmers needed technical extension information on Kharif<\/em> crops and non-pesticide management (NPM) practices to\u00a0plan for their Kharif activity at the earliest and reduce their dependence on inputs from markets and supply chains which were affected by the lockdown.<\/p>\n

In this situation,\u00a0when guidelines issued by the Government\u00a0would not allow commun\"\"ity meetings (for our classical video dissemination<\/a>), we\u00a0explored\u00a0WhatsApp, a popular Internet-based messaging platform.<\/p>\n

We started sharing the relevant videos (which were repurposed for sharing on WhatsApp) from the 1st<\/sup> week of May 2020 to the\u00a0frontline workers or agriculture extension agents\u00a0and farmers who\u00a0had smartphones.\u00a0We managed to reach farmers in\u00a0all 12 districts in the state where we are working with MKSP-JSLPS. The extension agents\u00a0also reached out to farmers who were not smartphone users and disseminated the videos through their own mobile\u00a0in a smaller group\u00a0while maintaining social distancing norms. Currently, we’re sharing two videos every fortnight with the farmers and the extension agents.<\/p>\n

\"\"In this project funded by Oracle<\/a>, we have reached over 400\u00a0extension agents who have in turn reached and disseminated the information to over 7000 farmers, either through WhatsApp or direct dissemination. 8 videos on improved agri-practices of pigeon-pea and NPM practices have been shared so far.<\/p>\n

It\u00a0is very encouraging to see that the adoption of disseminated practices have started taking place. Farmers are now actively preparing NPM inputs for their Kharif<\/em> crop and have started sowing the pigeon pea crop.<\/p>\n

\"\"We plan to reach over 40,000 unique farmers during 2020-21, with multiple interventions, including pigeon pea, NPM practices, Agri-Nutrition Garden during this Kharif<\/em>\u00a0season and with mustard, wheat and potato during the upcoming Rabi<\/em> season.<\/p>\n

We’re keeping a close eye on the ground and as the situation evolves, we\u00a0hope to be able to\u00a0support the smallholder farmers through ICT channels that are most accessible to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Read how we’re supporting farmers in Jharkhand, India during COVID-19 with videos on non-pesticide management to avoid dependence on market inputs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-inspiration"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1765"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2545,"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1765\/revisions\/2545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitalgreen.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}