My dear
readers of Journal of Extension Education,
Welcome to a special issue of the JEE, on Agricultural Communication.
The earliest form of agricultural communication
should have been when farmers shared information by word-of-mouth. Arthsasthra (around 2nd - 3rd
century BC), an ancient Indian treatise on statecraft and economic policy, had
discussed different methods of seed treatment for grains, pulses, sugarcane and
tuber crops in detail. Thirukkural , a classic Tamil text (1st century BC/6th
- 7th century BC) too had a separate chapter on farming.
The history of agricultural communication, in an
organized form, can be traced back to 1440, with the invention of the Movable
Type printing Press by Johannes Gutenberg. Starting with face-to-face and
print, communication has taken different forms such as radio, television and
now, the web, over the years.
Today, agricultural communication is considered as
a social process designed to bring together agricultural technicians and
farmers in a two-way process where people are both senders and receivers of
information and co-creators of knowledge (FAO, 2006).
During 2006, FAO & GTZ had laid down six success factors for effective rural
Communication:
SUCCESS FACTOR 1: Policy: Formulating
policies enabling effective communication between research, advisory services,
and farmers’ organizations in rural areas
SUCCESS FACTOR 2: Capacities: Ensure that
service providers are skilled in communication and have a positive attitude to
communicate with clients
SUCCESS FACTOR 3: Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E): Facilitate systematic learning from
experiences in communication approaches
SUCCESS FACTOR 4: Farmers’ organizations:
Engage representative farmers’ organizations as partners in communication
SUCCESS FACTOR 5: Participatory methods: Use
of participatory methods for active involvement of all partners in
communication
SUCCESS FACTOR 6: Media strategy:
Integrating a mix of media in a strategic manner to achieve the desired
objectives
These aforementioned factors could be kept in mind
while we design and implement projects in agricultural communication.
I hope you find the papers in this Special issue,
interesting. Do send your feedback to editorextension@gmail.com.
JEE 29(2)
D. Puthira Prathap
Chief
Editor