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Given that the object of FAO assistance in the second TOP was to consolidate AlS's Communication Campaign Strategies, we decided to replicate as far as possible those elements that had worked well in the first campaign exercise, and to try to improve upon areas of weakness. The over-riding factor, in essence, was to refine the Development Support Communication Process Model in a new setting, and 'consolidate' a practical approach to carrying out multi-channel communication campaigns.
The new pilot district selected, Mohale's Hoek, is in the southern region of the country and in general is characterised as an arid area. Several internationally sponsored irrigation schemes are on-going as well as "water harvesting" projects. As in the previous pilot districts, the theme of the campaign in Mohale's Hoek was determined by the DAO in collaboration with the DEO and various Subject Matter Specialists. The topic of high priority decided upon, in line wan the dry nature of the region, was to increase sorghum production, a drought resistant crop. Correspondingly, an area in the district with high potential for expanded sorghum cropping was selected for the multi-media intensive portion of the campaign.
The specific objectives of the campaign were to 1) significantly increase knowledge levels where warranted, and 2) to meet farmers' expressed information needs with respect to recommended seed varieties and methods of sorghum production, and reducing postharvest losses. Preliminary information supplied by the SMS also suggested that sorghum was primarily used for making soft porridge and 'joala', a local beer. If this were borne out by the target audience baseline survey, additional objectives of the campaign would be to promote a variety of nutritional dishes which could be made from sorghum, and to change attitudes toward its perceived, more limited, 'traditional' uses.
As opposed to the previous campaigns which were designed to run for a full cropping cycle, because of the timing of the FAO project which was due to come to an end in December, H was decided to run the entire set of campaign materials over a three and one-half month period. With a start-up date of mid-August, this would mean a completion date at the end of November with the impact survey to follow-up in December.
Essentially, the same design and materials delivery strategy was to be used as in the previous exercises. And since the production of sorghum is closely related to maize, we were able to quickly adapt both the baseline survey methodology questionnaire used in the earlier campaign. Again the same content modules were decided upon, with the exception of knowing when to harvest. This section was eliminated from the baseline survey, but others added (e.g., perceived advantages, disadvantages and uses of sorghum as compared with other grain crops, and safety measures when using pesticides) in order to provide a better information context for media production. The survey team in this case consisted of the campaign supervisor and four production assistants who would be involved in preparing campaign materials (Photo #7) . The exercise thus familiarised them with their target farming audience in the southern part of the country.
Photo 7: Baseline survey team for sorghum campaign.
The media intensive target area within the district was a group of ten villages; four of these were selected for the baseline survey, three at random and the fourth because of the location of the Area Chief. The intention was to sample twenty-five heads of household in each. Our basic criteria for selecting a particular farmer was that he or she was planning on sowing sorghum during the forthcoming season, and was willing to take part in listening to and viewing audio-visual presentations over a three month period, as well as tune in to weekly radio broadcasts on sorghum dedicated to their area. Altogether 99 respondents were sampled in the four villages.
One of the weaknesses of the former maize campaign evaluation procedure was in not including a "non-campaign" group with which to compare the before-and-after results of the target group's exposure to the multi-media materials and field demonstrations. This type of sample is normally called a 'control group' in the evaluation literature and ideally would be composed of farmers having the same ecological conditions and farming patterns as the campaign group; equality in pre-campaign levels of knowledge, attitudes, and practices would also be desirable. In responding to the same pre and post campaign questionnaires as the target group, the control group is designed to control for, or neutralise, all factors which may be operational during the testing period so that the effects of the campaign per se can be directly examined. In practice, a "pure" control group is difficult to come by, especially where radio broadcasting is used as part of the media mix. And even among non-listening respondents, the secondary effects from talking to neighbours who do tends to contaminate the purity of the control sample.
With the foregoing caveats in view, we administered the same campaign group questionnaire to an additional sixty-two farmers in two villages in an area adjacent to where the presentations would take place. It is worth noting that the villages had not been visited by an extension agent for well over a year before the survey, nor were they part of any officer's current roster.
Our initial rationale, therefore, was that the "control" group in this sense would have access to only radio broadcasts during the campaign period; our post-campaign analysis would hence involve comparing the effects of radio only versus the multi-channel presentations. Radio in this case would mean a dedicated broadcast for the area, once per week on Thursday evening.
The analysis of the baseline survey and the drafting of guidelines for media production was completed during the last week in June, which, given the timetable mentioned earlier, meant a relatively short preparation period of 6 weeks prior to launching the first group media presentation.
The two-week-out, two-week-in procedure for the mobile van presentations - or what we termed the "first wave" - which operated with success during the previous exercises, was planned to be used again. An important variation was that, given the low knowledge levels on different ways of preparing sorghum as a household food, the week before starting the media presentations was to be used for village based cooking demonstrations by a nutritionist. During these demonstrations the high nutritional value of sorghum would be explained and women would be provided with hand-outs listing the recipes of the various dishes prepared.
Prior to the launch date, the AIS team held a field communication workshop for the six extension workers in the district, five of whom would be involved in the "second wave,' of the campaign, that is to say, organising cassette listening groups on an eight village per extension agent ratio with one listening session per week. Each cassette, following the earlier format, would have a combined length of twenty to thirty minutes. Cassette playback sessions would be followed by a discussion of the issues raised, and where practical, a field demonstration by the extension agent. As well, the monitoring forms developed during the previous Butha Buthe and Thaba Tseka campaigns would again be used in Mohale's Hoek to provide feedback as to the effectiveness of the production strategies employed.
The campaign began as anticipated on August 15th, with the first presentation devoted to cooking demonstrations of sorghum and explanations of as nutritional value. Only one week was slotted for this activity, and rather than cramming all ten villages in the target area into a five day period, in-depth presentations were given in four villages with people from surrounding villages invited to attend. Leaflets outlining the various recipes were given out after the demonstrations.
The multi-media intensive portion of the campaign began directly after the cooking demonstrations and more or less followed the schedule outlined in the planning stages. As a result of the slightly delayed start, the final presentation on prevention of post-harvest losses coincided with the impact evaluation mission during early December, and interviews with farmers included in the four village baseline survey were literally conducted one step behind the AIS presentation team!
Similar to the earlier campaigns which also had a short lead time between the baseline survey analysis and the first presentation, all group media sessions did not have the full complement of audio-cassettes, slide-tapes, posters and handouts. Indeed, like the maize campaign in Butha Buthe, only the first two sorghum production modules were media complete; the latter two were made up of audio-cassettes only with posters and handouts. All, however, had radio broadcast support (10 minutes dedicated to the area each Thursday evening), and excellent cooperation from the campaign area extension agent.
Again, problems cropped up in scheduling conflicts, and in some cases poor turn-outs, because of insufficient advertising on the part of village organisers. In one instance, the death of a Chief's wife forced the cancellation of a presentation. With the tight touring sequence in place, the cancellation of a particular visit meant that a given village would have to wait for the next campaign module presentation a month down the road.
Serious constraints were evident as well in what was originally planned as the "second wave" of the campaign and the organisation of cassette listening groups by the extension workers not involved in the media intensive villages. In the first instance, the radio/cassette players arrived late and were not distributed until after the campaign was under way. As a result, all extension agents who were to be involved in the second wave were assigned other duties and consequently had little time to devote exclusively to the campaign. Where possible, however, some did hold listening sessions but they were largely uncoordinated and certainly not in step with the schedule originally envisaged. This was further complicated by a haphazard distribution of audio-cassettes by the District Office and sufficient batted sets to enable at least eight playback sessions over a two week period. Consequently, very few monitoring reports were received from the field. To alleviate this problem in the future, AIS has proposed to place one staff member in each of the three campaign districts to take charge of all matters related to local production and distribution of materials at the field level.
A number of natural problems, impossible to predict in advance, were also experienced by farmers involved in the campaign. The most serious of these was a massive outbreak of cutworms which necessitated re-seeding of sorghum fields, sometimes as many as two or three times. In the end, one quarter of the campaign area farmers included in the baseline sample were forced to move from seeding sorghum to quick yielding varieties of maize, beans and potatoes. And among those who did manage to re-seed successfully, many were forced to revert to locally grown seeds after having started with a recommended, certified variety. Correspondingly, basic fertiliser applications were also much lower in the second and third round of planting. These deviations were well beyond the control of the campaign organisers and perhaps more than anything else re-emphasised Murphy's Law that ``Anything that can go wrong, will"! Farmers of course know this maxim only too well, and the example graphically suggested to campaign organisers the need to exercise patience in the face of natural diversities.
Against the formerly described backdrop, H became apparent that the main focus for assessing the effectiveness of the campaign would have to be on as informational Impact since the only place we could expect any changes in practices would be in the use of top dressing fertilisers and attitudes toward building silos. With this perspective in view, the evaluation team took to the field, as mentioned earlier, during the last week of the campaign. In order to give as much advance time as possible for completion of the village presentations, the team - consisting of five AIS media producers - decided to start with the resampling of the non-campaign, control group. Out of the original 62 farmers, we re-interviewed 44 over a two day period (Photo #8). Interestingly, we found that 26 out of this number had not listened to the sorghum campaign broadcasts dedicated to Mohale's Hoek during the previous three and one-half months, while 18 had. As well, no extension worker had visited either village in the period intervening between the baseline and second survey. It was thus decided to designate the 26 non-listeners as the control or non-campaign group, and the remaining 18 as a radio listening group to assess the effects of radio alone on levels of information gained during the campaign.
Photo 8: Post-Campaign Survey (Control Group Village).
Three days were required to complete the reinterviewing in the four villages initially sampled in the media intensive campaign area. Out of the original 99, we were able to resample 57 respondents who had attended the presentations. The retention rate of 58% for Mohale's Hoek compares with figures of 52% for the mid-term impact in Butha Buthe, and 69% for the post-campaign survey. Thus, on average, based on the Lesotho experience one can look for 60% participant retention rates over the duration of a campaign.
Figure 3 presents the before-and-after information levels by individual sorghum production operation for the full campaign group. As can be readily noted, a clear pattern is discernable with impressive gains between pre and post campaign knowledge levels. At least a doubling in knowledge levels for all production operations was noted except for knowledge of Disease Control (smut and oust). Even with these gains, some areas require further attention since the end results are relatively low; knowledge of certified, high yielding sorghum seed varieties, and pest and disease control are specific examples where either the audio-visual presentations might be revised, or run again for increased effect.
Figure 4 shows the clear trend in knowledge acquisition levels between pre-campaign scores and actual gains made individually among the full campaign, radio only, and control group, the latter having no exposure to campaign materials during the period. The knowledge levels are based upon a maximum total score of 65 for both the baseline and post-campaign surveys. Figure 5, in turn, is perhaps the more interesting of all the graphs since H shows 1) virtually no difference in average baseline knowledge levels among all groups (18.5% for control group, 18.8% for the radio only group, and 18.2% for the full campaign group), and 2) a relative gain of 128% for the full campaign group, 71% for the radio group, and 21% for the control group. These results bring into sharp relief the power of the combined multi-channel strategy and the wisdom of, wherever possible, using a mutually reinforcing media-mix backed up with interpersonal support at the village level. At the same time, the effects attributed to radio alone in the absence of any extension agent assistance forcibly demonstrate the strength of this ubiquitous, rural mass medium in carrying Us weight in any multi-media combination designed to boost levels of awareness and specific information gains. As well, the "spin-off" or secondary effects of radio can be inferred from the information gains, although small, made by the control group. Since both the radio and control group respondents resided in the same villages, H can logically be assumed that the gains made by the latter group were through interpersonal conversations with those listening to radio. Again, this is only an assumption since a "pure" control group was not available. The singular value of radio demonstrated in both the Lesotho campaigns supports similar trends noted in other Third-World studies. Recent reports from India, for example, suggest that a new variety of so-called Radio rice" is widely used in many parts of the country!
Figure 3: Pre and post-campaign knowledge levels by sorghum production operation - full campaign group
Figure 4: Pre and post-campaign knowledge levels by individual groups
Figure 5: Comparison of pre-campaign, post-campaign and relative gains in knowledge levels by groups sampled.
Another interesting area presented in this campaign for the first time was a section on safety methods when using pesticides. Practices such as wearing protective clothing and face masks, spraying down wind, washing immediately if pesticide comes in contact with skin, and proper cleaning-up procedures were explained. Interestingly, all three groups showed significant information gains in this section of the questionnaire: the full campaign control group went from a pre-campaign low of 5% to a post-campaign score of 56%, the radio group from an initial base of 14% to a post-campaign score of 50%, and the control group from 10% to 25%. Indeed, the relative gain made by the full campaign group makes this section by far the most successful of all the units included in the four module presentations. Certainly, the AIS team can be satisfied with their initial efforts in promoting good safety practices in this potentially dangerous stage of pest control.
The overall results conclusively demonstrate that a successful campaign was waged in terms of information delivery but, as we noted earlier, a number of natural calamities combined to thwart changes in practices per se. In a short campaign of three and one-half months even with normal growing conditions one should not expect to see a lot of changes, but in this case we actually had a retrograde movement in some instances. Mention has already been made of the cutworm outbreak which forced at least 25% of the campaign group to abandon sorghum production altogether for the season after already seeding two and sometimes three times. Others, who had started out with recommended high yielding seed varieties, were forced to revert to locally grown seeds because of the expenses involved. Similar responses were evident with respect to the application of basic fertilisers, individual supplies of which were already used in previous plantings. Indeed, the only "timely" change in practices we found was in the application of top dressing fertiliser wherein among the 42 farmers who had stayed with planting sorghum, from a base of 4 (10%) who said they would use it in the pre-campaign survey, 15 or 38% planned to use H after the campaign. And as an additional post-campaign benefit, most farmers (94%) said they would like to build a silo and four said they planned to do so. For the most part, however, the report card on translating the large knowledge gains into practices remains to be completed and at least one more "normal" season is required before the ultimate value of the campaign can be properly assessed.
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