Agricultural education, extension and training aims at ensuring that information on improved techniques, livestock husbandry practices reach the farmers who need them most.

Communication - this sharing of ideas and information - is a large part of an extension worker's or a development worker's job, whether they are part of a formal extension agency, or any other group working with farmers or poor households.

By passing on ideas, advice and information, agricultural extension workers attempt to influence the decisions that farmers make. They may encourage farmers to communicate with one another, since farmers are an important source of information for each other, and the sharing of problems and ideas is an important in a farming community.

Extension workers and others involved in the communication of agricultural and livestock related information must also be able to communicate with superior officers and research workers about situations faced by farmers in their area.

There are many ways in which such extension agents and farmers might communicate. This section looks at general principles of communication and discusses the use of mass media and audio-visual aids for communication in extension work.

• Communication is important to support participatory development.
  
• Communication and participation are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.
  
• Communication for development means the planned use of different strategies (media and others) to help people become aware of and articulate their position, exchange knowledge and skill to take control over their lives, reach consensus and manage conflicts, and improve the effectiveness of organizations.
  
• Communication is about bridging understanding within a human community by exchanging messages to enrich meaning and common knowledge, often with the purpose of embracing change.

Knowledge:

interpret the message

Information:

make decisions

Capital:

invest in new inputs

Risk:
(and farmers’ perception of risk)

feel confident in changing practices or investing in new inputs

Attitudes:
(and those of peers)

feel that changing practices is a good idea

Credibility of message and its source:

feel that the message can be trusted

Markets:

be confident that they will be able to sell any increased in output

Inputs:

acquire the inputs they need to put the new knowledge into practice

Regulations:

and their implementation

Livelihood strategy:

may need diversifying in order to implement message

Competing demands on resources:

may mean message cannot be implemented due to lack of resources

The information or idea that is communicated

The way the message is transmitted. There may be some noise or distortion in these channels.

Receiver

What information does the receiver want or need?

Channel

What is the most effective way of passing the message?

Message

What should the message be

Source

Who is the source of the message?

Printed media can combine words, pictures and diagrams to convey accurate and clear information. Their great advantage is that they can be looked at for as long as the viewer wishes, and can be referred to again and again. This makes them ideal as permanent reminders of extension messages. However, they are only useful in areas where a reasonable proportion of the population can read.

The printed media that are commonly used in extension include posters, booklets, leaflets, circulars or newsletter, and newspapers.

Publications

Although publications have a long shelf life and may be useful sources of reference their effectiveness is limited by: failure to consider the needs of users in the design and content of publications (e.g. extension workers often find booklets and leaflets intended for farmers more useful than those they receive from research institutions); language that is inappropriate for the intended audience; low literacy levels among some categories of end users; and poor circulation, due partly to the escalating cost of maintaining journal subscriptions (intermediate users).

Leaflets and pocket guides

Leaflets and short booklets can give effective reminders of technical detail, particularly regarding quantitative information which are poorly remembered from audio-visual media, and visual (diagrams) or verbal descriptions that can be essential to identification of phenomena and organisms in the field.

Radio is a particularly useful mass medium for extension. Battery-operated radios are widely available in rural communities. Information can reach households directly and instantly throughout a region or country. Urgent news or warnings can be communicated far more quickly than through posters, extension agents or newspapers.

Despite radio's mass audience, a good presenter can make programmes seem very informal and personal, giving the impression that an individual listener is being spoken to directly. Radio is one of the best ways of spreading awareness of new ideas to large numbers of people and can be used to publicise extension activities. It can also enable one community or group to share its experiences with others.

It is estimated that there are more than 800 million radios in developing countries. Groups of households also get together to listen to radio programmes - so radio can even reach those that don't own their own radios.

The terms visual and audio-visual aid refer to anything that an extension worker or anybody else uses to help facilitate communication when interacting with a group, in this case farmers or livestock keepers on the one hand, or during discussions with decision makers at a policy level on the other hand.

The spoken word is the main communication tool, but whether one is speaking to a large village meeting or discussing a problem in a field with a farmer, the impact and effectiveness can be greatly increased by the use of suitable visual and audio-visual aids. When selected and used properly, these aids can help in presenting the message.

Television still reaches mainly urban audiences, some of whom may be managers and key decision-makers within intermediate user agencies, and individuals with influence over farming decisions by relatives on family holdings in rural areas. However, in many developing countries the accessibility of TV is increasing and audiences are growing in rural areas. Satellite channels and networks offer potentially very large international audiences. With multiple channels available to viewers, however, agricultural broadcasts must compete for attention with entertainment, sport and current affairs programmes. Local and national TV channels are will provide more suitable platforms for agricultural and livestock extension messages.

Video combines most of the advantages of both film and audio-cassettes. Recordings are immediately available for viewing and listening on a computer or TV. This enables the production team to re-record any material that they are not satisfied with. Simple editing can be done by copying required sections (clips) in the order in which they are to appear in the finished production. More accurate and complicated editing requires special editing equipment, and increasingly this can be done using computer software on laptop PCs.

Video can be used as a tool in demonstrations, as an aid to learning (e.g. how-to-do it videos), as well as an integral part of community-led programmes of change and development - participatory video.

Using video as a participatory tool is growing in popularity, driven partly by the ongoing improvements in video technology, as well as by an increasing availability of suitable computers, software and trained personnel.

Video can be used as a tool by communities to scrutinise their problems and find solutions. The video camera is able to "participate" in community discussions, document scenes, and record interviews with individuals. The recorded segments can be played back and shown to the community - generating further discussion. Recordings can also be shown to the relevant authorities as part of village-led campaigns for awareness raising of the needs for actions or policy changes. After several months, or later when changes are taking place, the recorded materials can be edited, so creating a summary of the whole process.

Farmers like to see how a new idea works and what effect it can have on their crop or livestock production. This can be done by means of an on-farm demonstration. A good, practical demonstration is an invaluable method in extension work. It is a particularly powerful method to use with farmers who do not read easily and who therefore cannot rely on print media for up to date agricultural information. A demonstration can give such farmers an opportunity to observe, at first hand, the differences between a recommended practice and their own current practices. The strength of the demonstration should lie in its simplicity and its ability to present the farmer with concrete results.

A field tour is an ideal method of involving farmers and of stimulating genuine interest in extension activities. It is also very useful in bringing farmers together to discuss common problems and to gain useful experiences of other areas.

Local notice boards can be used very effectively to display leaflets, posters and short notes, as well as to advertise the dates, locations and times of meetings. The presentation should be made to be eye-catching, and some of the guidelines given under audio-visual aids are also relevant on notice boards. In addition, material on display on a notice board should be renewed on a regular basis, or removed once the event is over. Local notice boards may, of course, also be associated with Village Information Centres.

Village Information Centres, or VIC, have an increasingly important role to play in communication and dissemination of agricultural and livestock related information to rural communities - along with a range of other rural development-oriented information. The ability of VICs to interact with a wide spectrum of people in rural areas, from school children through to the elderly, and the potential for two-way communication represents a significant advantage.

Village Information Centres have also, notably in the Indian sub-continent, become synonymous with the use and spread of Internet to rural areas, and E-learning.

Extension can have an important role in feeding back information on farmers' constraints and potentials, to encourage relevant research. It can also introduce the research system to innovations by farmers. Farmers, regardless of their resource and socioeconomic status, will adopt new technologies and modify resource use when they consider the change is relevant to their circumstances and can help them achieve their goals. An extension service can have an important function in speeding farmers' adoption of measures that can enhance their productivity and welfare… Hence extension has the potential to increase the rate of adoption by directly increasing awareness, by helping producers acquire skills, and by helping them understand a technology and its relevance to their circumstances.