Communication for Development, community media and ICTs for family farming and rural development
Question 3 (opens 26 September)
15/09/2014
What are the barriers family farmers face when using community media and other ICT tools?
the main barriers that have occurred in Nicaragua and in developing countries (wrong definition) are;
accessibility of telecom services
affordability for telecom services and electronic devices
ICT education
development policies of the states in rural areas
here some
Walther, I am curious to know more about your comment that ICT eduction is a barrier. In particular I wonder what type or level of ICT education.
My organization, UN-APCICT, is working with universities in the Asia-Pacific region to improve ICTD curriculum. So this is addressing formal ICTD education at the university level. As part of this programme we work with educators and subject experts to produce learning tools known as the "Primer Series on ICTD for Youth".
We are also looking at possibilities of extending this to students in secondary education or to young people outside of formal education. I see a lot of potential in working with people outside formal education.
Is this related to your comment? I would be happy to know more about your thoughts on this matter, and also thoughts from everyone else about ICT education.
Hello everyone
some barriers in the use of ICT and its tools:
- Internet access difficulties or technological support tools in general, both by the absence in its immediate neighborhood as its high cost
- Fear of change, they may perceive a threat to their health
- Lack of conditions for the exchange or wrong way to arrange that hinder the adoption of new processes and practices.
The most common barriers includes;
1.Internet/ network coverage is not good in most of the rural areas.
2.In rural areas electricity is still a problem.
3.The cost of purchasing mobile applications and its operation through mobile service providers is not affordable to farmers
Thank you all for your contributions. We already can read about some of the barriers family farmers face under this question, but also under the previous questions. Have you encountered barriers when you wanted to work with community media and ICT tools for family farmers? If so - let us know which ones - and also... were you able to overcome the barrier(s) and how? Looking forward to read more about this topic.
Hello, this question is very interesting as it is often forgotten that not always women and men face the same barriers when talking about "accessing" and even more when we go further in depth with aspects of "controlling". Currently I with the Dimitra Team at FAO and in the contexts where we work, (mainly in rural areas of Sub-Saharan Africa) several constraints (migratory population movements, limited infrastructure, discrimination, low levels of literacy) limit rural peoples’ access to the information and communication they need to make informed choices and raise their voices at different levels (households, organizations, communities, policy). These constraints are even more true for women who are the backbone of family farming, yet they are often deprived of status, voice, leadership positions, cut-off from decision-making and from the participation as leaders in rural organizations and villages’ meetings. For this reason it is crucial to integrate a gender perspective in all the phases of a development initiative. In the case of the Dimitra community listeners’ clubs different aspects were considered, such as: the fact that not always women own a radio or have access to one (and even when they have access to radio they are not able to raise their voices and interact with other women of other villages and network); languages in which programmes are broadcast; choose in a participatory manner topics of interest to rural women, men and young people (which may not always coincide); combination of channels of communication (wind-up and solar-powered rural radios, community radios and cell-phones); all this backed by a flexible methodology that enhances participation and discussion for collective action
Hi all,
I agree with the points raised above by Walther, Raul and Enna.
I would add barriers related to the content itself - on the internet particularly:
- Language Barrier!
- The feeling of overload of information. There is so much to grasp that we may just not grasp anything of it.
- The quality of information - What is good information, what is bad information? How can one be critical enough and make a right judgement on what is provided to him/her as a "truth". That's without to say that too often the more accessible information isn't the more accurate!
- Humour, Satire and cultural background. We don't have all the same humour; irony, particularly, can not be perceived by all of us on a first place. This leads sometimes to quite "dangerous" interpretations and confusion on what to trust.
- Local versus Global - what am I supposed to find, as a Family Farmer, that could be of interest to me, my daily life and work in my area - particularly on the internet? How does the big picture relate to me and my conditions/my challenges/ my opportunities (be it national, regional and global)? What can I make of it - on an economic, political, social, environmental level. Family farmers may feel completely disconnected from some content they find on the world wide web particularly, and they may not see the value of it, although these dynamics do impact their life and require them to be more informed.
These challenges are not faced by Family Farmers only, but they may call for specific answers for the case of Family Farmers. What do you think?
In Bangladesh, we have 6 telecom operators who are very aggresive for client requisition. Low tariff , and recently improved network coverage are enabling agents for faremrs' access to technology through mobile. What catalysed it further is the availability of economic mobile handsets. So in current situation, around 84% of rural farmers have mobile phones in my country. But the use of mobile is in very elementary level, such as giving missed calls, making/receiving calls. Advanced use of services such as MMS/internet/value added service related to agriculture through mobile is very limited. Challenges that we face include low awareness of such advanced services, lack of know how of how to use them, tech averseness, and price of these services. Promotional campaign is now designed based on the lifecycle of the service launched. When a new service is launched, mass level promotional campaigns are conducted to create awareness. In the second stage, we concentrate on communication in smaller, targetted audience in clusters with demonstration effect. During these sessions, we focus heavily on content that is being delivered (service benefits properly defined, has to relate to the farmer's lifestyle) and also on activities that can reduce tech averseness of these farmers.
There are a lot of points now on barriers (both here and in Question 2). Let me expand on some where I think intermediaries and community media could have a big positive impact.
For information services based on modern ICT to thrive among family farmers, language is an issue from at least two perspectives.
First, there is the actual language (English, German, Thai, etc.) of the information content. Depending on the study one reads, most of the content on the web is in one of four major languages, with English being predominant. While I have not seen any statistics, anecdotally most of the family farmers I have met or read about do not speak or read any of these "major Internet languages". So where does the information they need come from? In a few cases there is economic incentive to translate or create content in a local language, but in most cases there is not a large enough market for this to happen. (For an analogy, look at the history of standars for non-Roman fonts and Microsoft OS.)
Second, when content is availabe in a langugage that can be understood, the style or level of the language used (i.e. audience targeting) is not appropriate. I believe Katalyst, Grameen Foundation and others know this all too well.
Intermediaries and community media can help bridge these language gaps. Hopefully others will provide more examples.
We all know that farmers have often access individually to ICTs or community media, but they face different constraints (e.g. connectivity, contents, lack of appropriate communication methodologies, etc.) as highlighted by Agit Maru and others, under discussion thread 1.
These problems cannot be adequately solved unless they are dealt systematically and in an integrated manner. I think that the focus should not be on technologies (e.g. ICTs vs. community media) but rather on the need for integrated rural communication services to facilitate equitable access to knowledge and information and to give the voice to farmers and communities. This implies promoting communication/ICTs policies for the rural sector that should be designed bringing together rural institutions and farmers’ organizations, as well as enhancing the capacities of the service operators and communities involved in the process.
Hello from Kenya / Afghanistan
Enna.. yes, we all love the idea of apps and cost can be a challenge but so is the cost of both the smart phone and internet access needed to download them. So my 2 cents....
1. Literacy is still a real challenge especially in arid / semi arid regions where cultures have been more isolated to commercial farming. Classic content via sms may not be the best option unlike IVT etc... And even if they are semi-literate, most of them speak a local dialect that may not support immediate knowledge transfer in the classical form of their "mother" tongue. I found this to be especially true here in East Africa where Swahili is the official language but very few farmers speak classic Swahili and instead speak a bleneded form with their tribal language. So ... this may just be lumped into the feedback Marina gave on "language barrier."
2. Privacy ....This is still a REAL challenge for women especially in markets where they have very little personal privacy, let alone choiice or access to their own or the family's mobile phone.
3. Investment .... That's right. There needs to be more private secor investment. Of course content is a challenge but so is the lack of agreements to reduce the costs Telcos can charge because I have seen some mercenary charges being passed through. To make any model financially self-sustainable, these charges must be absorbed.
4. Sticky content & National campaigns ... Good technical informaiton / advice should be coupled with campaigns from national Ministries . Working in a vaccum doesn't create any stickiness within rural communities.
A little food for thought
Rachel
Ethnic and cultural applicability of ICTs for rural development
Rachel has been a very important fact, do not expect ICT functioned the same everywhere, in some cultures with different languages or dialects in the same region, perhaps modern ICT will not work, not only the language if not also the culture, not we have to see as a barrier, but as something to take intoaccount and respect, otherwise it'll if it is imposed is likely to crash and not culturally or empower ownership of these ICT.
situation with respect to gender some cultures do not accept that women have some participation in agriculture or certain things that have mobile phones or computers, we know that is not correct from our point of view, but it could collide with the leaders or heads of rural households a gender component in the project maybe help change attitudes in the community
walther
I agree with the above list of the obstacles: availability, access, affordability, relevance which includes timeliness, trustworthiness, and usefulness of the content - and then the range of behavioural and social considerations that influence how smallholder farmers make effective use of ICTs and the information/knowledge that can be mobilized on them. The other obstacle I would add based on our experiences with research is TIME. Farmer time to access and use ICTs. A couple examples:
- in Ontario, Canada we found that farm women are true knowledge multitaskers in the family who act as infomediaries - going online to source and send farm related info - complete online forms, arguee the telecoms billing, etc. Women who work off-farm may also use their job-based access to higher speed internet to access online farm-related info; in contrast male farm operators spend less time online and report feeling frustrated with online info access - their preference (not from the studies we've done - only anecdotal - is speed dial on their cell phones to other farmers/agricultural representatives)
- in field studies my students and I have done in Sri Lanka, Ghana and Bangladesh, TIME has been cited as a factor for farmer access to information,, particularly time to participate in listening clubs, communicate with other farmers/seek out and visit NGOs etc.
In your experiences, since agriculture is typically hands-on, field-based work, time can be a genuine obstacle to smallholder farmers' uptake and use of ICTs in agriculture? Those in the costly field of "precision agriculture" (use of high tech, data intensive tools in agriculture) recognize time as a major obstacle (and selling point for "smart agriculture" applications).
Helen
Hello everyone,
I woudl kike to share with you the challenges reported in the e-agriculture 10 year report because it summarizes somewhat many of the contributions so far:
- Content. Adaptation of content to local needs, languages and contexts remains challenging. Appropriate information resources (i.e. content) and trusted intermediaries are necessary for success of e-agriculture initiatives. Dissemination of information may be constrained if the nature of information does not match farmers’ needs in terms of format and relevance.
- Enabling environment.- Scaling up pilot ICT projects to reach millions of smallholder farmers remains a challenge. Up-scaling and mainstreaming of projects is often not sufficiently supported by dialogues at organizational and national levels so as to create a policy environment that is conducive to the effective use of ICTs in agriculture.
- Capacity development. Focus on access to agricultural information without including the ability to effectively use the information has not yet yielded the desired reduction of the rural digital divide. Illiteracy, limited skills in using complex devices and searching for information, cultural issues remain barriers to the effective reception and use of information delivered via ICTs.
- Gender and diversity. Access for women, youth, older farmers and people living in most remote areas is hindered by the price of access to ICTs (e.g. broadband or mobile services) and by persistent inequalities. Youth’s access and familiarity with technologies as well as their role in the social dynamics of rural communities are not yet sufficiently leveraged.
- Access and participation. Access to ICTs is not yet equitable. A gender-based digital divide persists, and is more frequent in rural than urban areas. Similar to the challenges reported in other key areas, proper design and implementation based on a bottom-up approach that involves the communities themselves can reduce the potential for information inequity that can be created when introducing new ICTs into a community.
- Partnerships. Public-private partnerships are recognized as a critical factor in sustainable business models at the community level, but these do not always have to be with large corporate firms: small, local private companies, local producer organizations and community-based NGOs have often the social capital to provide trusted information and good quality services.
- Technologies. Identifying the right mix of technologies that are suitable to local needs and contexts is often a challenge, in spite of – or due to - the rapid increase in mobile telephone penetration in rural areas. While this offers great potential for increasing access to information, challenges remain in the area of effective use of mobile telephony that are related to access and capacity as described above.
- Financial sustainability. Scaling up pilot ICT projects to reach millions of smallholder farmers and identifying sustainable business models are still challenges. Pricing is critical to sustainable agri-business models at community level. Investments are needed to cover the cost of creating content and collecting data.
During the recent virtual consultation organized by AMARC and FAO on COMDEV, Community media ICTs and family farming, the participants from Africa mentioned the following barriers :
"Low literacy levels
o Low literacy is a serious limiting factor for family farmers as it deprives them from accessing important information that is available in written format.
Poverty and lack of tech skills
o Family farmers being at the bottom of the economic ladder means they cannot afford computers or spend to access the internet at cafes if they were to need information from it. Unfortunately their low tech skills means even when social centers provide free internet, most rural farmers still cannot use it by themselves.
Lack of infrastructure in general and mass communication infrastructure in particular
o There is a need to invest in expanding mobile networks access.
o Lack of electricity, television, internet and community radio stations in most rural communities also pose a problem."
Mesdames, Messieurs,
L'une des difficultés majeure est la couverture du territoire national en radio, téléphone, Toutes les zones rurales n'ont pas accès à l'outil de communication. Ce qui est handicap les producteurs dans l'adoption des nouvelles technologies de production et d'avoir accès à temps aux marchés porteurs pour une meilleure commercialisation de leur production.
Patrice Yapi N'CHO, Consultant indépendant
One of the major difficulties is the national coverage by radio, telephone. Not all rural areas have access to the communication tools.This disables producers in the adoption of new production technologies and in having timely access to the growing markets for better marketing of their products.
Most of the recent information available from researchers is inform of thesis or a paper with complicated terms. This information should be simplified to farmers to be able to understand what the finding of the research were all about.
Its seen all over most of the research finding are just for publication and conferences but no clear Maps on what is expected of the farmer.
Main point is is the packaging of the information itself to be of use to farmers before publishing and disseminating to farmers
El acceso a internet, el disponer de equipos que faciliten labores, la formación y capacitación en esta temáticas, y yo creería que el pasar del conocimiento a la práctica, donde utilice esa información para su beneficio, la implementación de #AgricuturaCreativa.
Access to the internet, the availability of equipment to facilitate work, education and training on these subjects, and I believe that the passage from theory to practice, where you can use information to your advantage, implementing the #AgriculturaCreativa [Creative Agriculture]
- Lack of capacity of farmers and extension officers in the use of modern ways of communication and information dissemination (ICTs)
- Lack of access to adequate ICT tools and services by farmers, extension enterprises and extension service officers
While National ICT policies have been developed and adopted in various countries, there is no
effective provision for ICTs in agriculture. Some countries in Southern Africa are implementing
ICT in agriculture projects, yet ministries in charge of agriculture do not have adopted ICT
strategies or ICT strategies are not integrated into national agriculture policies.
Zambia: With the growing demand for technical information generation and dissemination by
farmers, and rapid changes in technology, the ministry of agriculture has in recent years been
designing programmes meant to use ICTs in service delivery. Among the notable ones include
agricultural information centres, internet based question and answer SMS services, and
digitization.
Mozambique: The Ministério da Agricultura (MINAG) as of April, 2005 did not have an ICT
strategy in place, although the interest to develop was there. The Centro de Documentação
Agrária e Informação do Sector Agrária (CDA) at MINAG is the department where web
development is being spearheaded. The production of quality content is a concern for CDA
management, as the creation of materials suitable for release on the web demands staff
capabilities that have yet to be developed. In fact, judging from the date of release of official
documents, release onto the website is slow. Between June 2004 and April 2005, the site was
not updated. (CTA, 2005)
Similar situations were discovered in Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana and Malawi where there are
no ICT strategies in the ministry of agriculture, and websites meant to provide agricultural
information are simple static sites. They are not frequently updated and therefore lack
usefulness. However, due to lack of a clearly defined and adopted ICT strategy in agriculture to
provide a framework for integration of ICT in the sector, various challenges have led to most of
these projects not achieving the desired results. Other challenges include lack of ICT skills among
extension and advisory services departments and lack of appropriate ICTs. For instance, there
are situations where senior members of staff do not have competent computer skills and are not
able to utilise the use of computers in the agricultural information centres pilot project.
3. The absence of effective Public Private Partnerships in linking ICTs to agricultural
development:
4. Lack of adequate frontline agricultural extension officers
More Details on this from this paper
[Input from Mr Isaac Cherestal via email]
Etant d’Haïti, en parlant d’obstacles, je dois parler d’un manque de volonté de la part des décideurs politiques, absence de lois cadre régissant le fonctionnement des médias communautaire, problèmes de l’énergie tant pour les agriculteurs et le fonctionnement des médias qui s’évoluent dans les zones rurales et manque de compétence et des équipements nécessaires au niveau de ces médias.
[Input from Noemi Stadler-Kaulich, Agroforestería dinámica en MOLLESNEJTA/Bolivia via email]
En las zonas rurales llega poco radio y TV, ambos tienen su clientela sobre todo en las ciudades, casi no hay programas para los productores familiares, además (casi) no hay internet; la idea sería que los municipios llegarían a las reuniones con videos educativos que informan sobre los temas de importancia.