Social media can offer amazing opportunities to farmers. It can help farmers to seek information on farm operations, clarify their doubts on plants/ livestock disease symptoms and can have immediate access to market related information. However, this can be possible only when they are socially networked with human resources -agricultural researchers, extension agents, veterinarians, progressive farmers, sellers & other buyers – in virtual space. Thanks to low cost of smartphones, there is an unprecedented increase of social media use in rural India. The power of social media can be harnessed and will be beneficial for the farming communities.
My Name is Devesh Thakur, age 34 (Mobile Number:919418495117) and I have been working as Assistant Professor for seven years in a veterinary college situated in one of the Northern Indian States, Himachal Pradesh.
Under Young Agriprenuers Project (YAP project), I wish to apply the impressive option of using social media as a low cost agricultural extension tool. Under my project design, I would select farmers/rural youth/first line extension workers who now increasingly use smart phones. I would organise four virtual learning-cum-discussion groups, each of two months duration for four different enterprises through social media.
I have selected four major agro based enterprises: dairy, poultry, potato& apple. These enterprises are four major livelihood sources for the area under proposed intervention. Initially for the first four months, total of 150 farmers each from four different enterprises would be selected through purposive snowball sampling technique (through extension agents, progressive farmers etc.).
The proposed work would be carried for the farmers of Himachal Pradesh India. The state suffers from tough geographical terrain and therefore the cost on agricultural information delivery remains high. Bench line survey indicators assessing their knowledge, attitude, information needs and productivity indicators would be assessed. Based on these indicators locally relevant information on the enterprises, supported through experts through social media would be provided.
Two most popular social media tools prevalent in India – Facebook and Whatsapp – would be used. Afterwards, effectiveness of social media on these indicators would be assessed. Thus, a total 600 farmers (who use Facebook and Whatsapp) would receive information on these agro based enterprises. Each user would be requested to share the information further to at least another 20 farmers, which means at least 12,000 farmers would be benefited through this online capacity building and information sharing platform. Besides, they would also be requested to explain the content received by them to other illiterate farmers and even post queries on other farmers’ behalf. Thus, the benefit may go well beyond 12,000 farmers.
As a part of my work profile, I have been associated in agricultural extension activities. Over the years I have developed good networking relationships with experts as well as farmers across the proposed work area. Through social media diverse information needs ranging from production to marketing as well weather based agro advisory service on these major enterprises would be met. Also, specific queries during emergencies such as weather induced crop damage, animal falling ill due to toxicity, in a specific time frame (24 to 48 hours) would be provided/answered. The farmer’s would be incentivised to forward information through financially supporting their internet data pack from the grant received under the project.
The project would help to test the effectiveness of social media as low cost agricultural extension tool for farmers. The project is expected to fill the information gaps and address the farmer queries through expert support. It would boost farmer to farmer extension, and would strengthen social capital. The project has a good chance of self-sustaining as once farming community and experts visualise the benefits, no further incentives may be needed to financially support their internet data packs which remain a major proposed cost under the project.
Motivation for me for the project
I have been part of agricultural extension activities for last seven years. Over the years I have realised that traditional extension activities through lectures have limited coverage, require physical infrastructure set up, are costly, have lesser feedback and infrequent interaction with the farmers. Social media is an inherently participative and democratic form of information dissemination. This has led me to explore and test this amazing tool for agricultural extension work.
I have been working on social media applications in agriculture as part of my doctoral research(currently enrolled in the PhD programme in Extension Education at Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Bareilly, India).The proposed project would definitely increase my sphere of work which would have a wider societal impact. Also, research grants under the project would surely help me to improve the quality of work. Gradually I would scale up the project to include more farmers.
I need 300 USD to buy a reasonable smartphone to post relevant content through social media platform.
100 USD are needed for high speed internet data pack charges.
3400 USD would be utilised as internet data pack charges for internet connectivity for 600 farmers. This internet data would be used by farmers for social media content downloading and further sharing with other farmers.
600 USD would be spent as travelling charges for an initial baseline survey and selection of respondents & miscellaneous charges such as social media content development.
600 USD is required as consultation charges for agricultural experts needed for relevant content delivery and providing regular responses to farmer queries.
Social media has the power to bring transformative changes in the agriculture extension delivery system of developing nations such as India. However, its true potential for meeting the farmers’ needs is yet to be empirically tested. The proposed project would not only directly benefit more than 12,000 farmers, but also, indirectly it can help millions of other fellow farmers and agricultural stakeholders.
Blogpost and picture submitted by Devesh Thakur (India) – drdth4[at]gmail.com
The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.
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