I am Gabriel Adukpo again, from the Department of Agriculture, Obuasi - Ashanti, Ghana.

The potential of radio to the development of rural advisory services is immense. Broadcasters are doing a great job to educate family farmers on various topics. Most radio stations rightly engage extension officers, researchers and policy makers to communicate their ideas to listeners.

Fortunately for us in Sub-Saharan Africa, Farm Radio International, based in Ottawa, Canada, assists its affiliate stations with resource materials and training. Farm Radio International and its partners have developed a standard known as VOICE standards in broadcasting. I have the privilege of being trained in script writing and farm radio program design. I believe if practitioners of rural advisory services can incorporate the use of radio in reaching out to family farmers it would go a long way to mobilize the latter for decision making.

I will shed a little light on the VOICE standards:

V stands for valuing the farmers - men, women and the youth.

O stands for opportunity. This means giving listeners the chance to contribute to the program. This can be realized through phone-in and phone-out calls, playback of farmers voices recorded on their farms and formation of listening clubs in the communities, among others.

I stands for information and includes the content of the message. Before generating the content, Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques are applied to determine the needs of the farmers.

C stands for consistency and it has to do with the regularity of the programs at a time the majority of family farmers are at home.

E - Entertaining. It entails suitable signature tune, appropriate formats, skillful broadcasting and anything that will make listeners stick to the program.

Gabriel Adukpo
Department of Agriculture
Obuasi Municipal Assembly
P. O. Box BI 300
Obuasi - Ashanti
Ghana
Tel: + 233 277 47 22 93
Email: gyaduk (at) yahoo.com

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