Web Trainings & Seminars – Too Much ICT In India & The Philippines!?


Morning, noon and evening, we have all kinds of information & communication technology (ICT) activities, seminars & trainings; this is all the exciting agricultural extension we need! Isn’t it?

Many and exciting, yes, but not anywhere the complete Extension we need in Agriculture – they are essentially come-ons, patikims (feed-ons), indicators of what people can learn if the extension of knowledge happened by training – necessarily with (a) subsequent refreshing and (b) augmenting the knowledge gained by experience.

After any training, you cannot expect Mastery! Graduating, we only have a novice, a beginner.

Yes, further training must happen after the initial training!
Training makes one somewhat knowledgeable, not fully.

There are several public and private training institutions (and individuals in groups) in agriculture, and they all behave like that – after every training, they act as if they are completely done. And look for other people to train.

No wonder that, for instance, we have extensive monocultures of rice – we train farmers to plant a new, high-yielding rice variety – and nothing more!

What about rice plus fish in the same farm? (Don’t tell me it will be expensive and take a long time: you can produce a training video and simply replay it in subsequent trainings. Or upload it.)

I’m reading the essay of Indian aggie extensionist A Suresh titled “Blog 158 – Streamlining Public Agricultural Extension In India: Indicators Beyond Revenue Expenditure Considerations[1]” (30 August 2021, Agricultural Extension in South Asia, Aesanetwork.org). Mr Suresh is worried that Indian extension is being reduced in personnel because of the very visible “penetration of modern information and communication technologies.”
(top image from Indian website)

India is complaining of too much ICT in agriculture!?

“Calls for reducing staff strength in public agricultural extension services (are) increasingly visible in policy circles, mainly due to revenue expenditure commitments and penetration of modern information and communication technologies.”

What kind of penetration? I am a Filipino extension man, teacher with a BS Agriculture major in Ag Edu from the #1 state college in the Philippines, UP Los Baños, a self-taught digital worker and warrior, now armed with his own theory of Communication for Development (ComDev). Web trainings and webinars are only the beginnings of extension; extension people must continue the actual distribution of bits & pieces of knowledge that a genuine Extension System with a proper Knowledge Bank would present to the public.

Among other things, Mr Suresh points to “the importance of a personal farm-specific advisory appropriate to the specific strengths and opportunities at the farm level.” That, I would say, summarizes the need of farmers for elementary and continuing extension. With ComDev.

(Mr Suresh mentions some regular duties of extension people: “supply of agricultural inputs including seeds and fertilizers, quality checking and certification, disbursal of subsidies and other financial support, crop loss estimates.”)

Webinars and trainings are available to all, but each one is only the beginning of extension, not the end of it! Otherwise, the effect will be the same if you simply distribute a farming manual in the local dialect!@517


[1]https://www.aesanetwork.org/blog-158-streamlining-public-agricultural-extension-in-india-indicators-beyond-revenue-expenditure-considerations/?fbclid=IwAR2hBwOhgzu7LJwHlk13Au1ADrrG24Kpm0hoZb3gJwdX_Sd7as4BuaVjK4E

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