I am Dr Praveen Kumar Shrivastava from India and I teach organic chemistry to my graduates and postgraduates students at Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh.

Referring to Question 4.4 in the conference background document (i.e. "Are there regional specificities regarding rural advisory services for family farms?"), these are my observations:

The Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India runs call centres in all or most of Indian languages. They are effective and give good advice to farmers. The main problem with understanding the advice is because:

(i) Differences in vocabulary and poor language skills of farmers unable to understand agriculture information (agri information)
(ii) Farmers perception and experts view are different and they live in their own world.
(ii) The call centres are more interested in sending SMS to maximum number of registered farmers. They concerned with timely advice and expert view on agriculture.
(iv) Old farmers cannot read, so SMS-based information is not useful. One to one communication by mobile or telephone is also not useful due to poor training of call centre employees and call centre employees are not interested in job.
(v) Agri information is also provided by agri business shop keeper and many other field persons who do not know the ABC  or basic of of agriculture.
(vi) Although at block level and agriculture college  farmer training are regularly organized.

My suggestion:
Each family volunteered one person (FVP) who can read and record the observation in writing and those persons formed a group in the village. Those persons record all the queries from the village and let the agriculture college student and their one faculty member understand the problem and give suggestion on the problem. Now this suggestion to the problem will be sent by SMS to all the members of village. Now the vocabulary is clearly understood by the farmers. Their query and answer are in same language having the same vocabulary. The Student and faculty member will provide marketing information, technical and all other information. The family volunteered person (FVP) will put forward their problems and knowledge to improve further. The FVP is the link between illiterate persons and an expert.

Dr. Praveen Kumar Shrivastava
Associate Professor,
Department of Chemistry.
Dayanad Brijendra Swroop Post Graduate College Kanpur. U.P. 208006.
India
Mobile 91-9235390587
e-mail: drpkshrivastava (at) gmail.com

References:
1. Anurag, T.S. and  S. Kumar. 2012. Interactive information dissemination system: Architecture for disseminating information to farmers. Information Technology in Developing Countries newsletter, Volume 22, No. 2, July 2012. http://www.iimahd.ernet.in/egov/ifip/jul2012/kumar.htm
2. Kisan Call Centre. http://agricoop.nic.in/PolicyIncentives/kisanCallDetail.htm

[To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/264776/

########################################################################

To unsubscribe from the RAS-L list, click the following link:
https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=RAS-L&A=1