Most of the citizens of the least developed and developing countries depend on agriculture for survival. In some countries, the majority of people depend on agriculture for survival.

Science and technology related to agriculture have grown manifold in the last few years. Yet, these advances are not available to poor farmers. The broadcast media needs to serve these excluded citizens.

When broadcasters do serve the interests of farmers and peasants, it is often with a sense of superiority. City dwellers get all the slick and quality programming, while the rural folk are expected to be happy with poor quality monologues on farming practices. But then, the rural poor are also exposed to the same genres of programming as the city folks and their expectations have changed over the years. Media literacy has improved. Some countries have even started channels devoted only to agriculture, taking into account the fragmentation of audiences that has happened in the last three decades.

Like health and medicine, there are corporations interested in the money that the rural folk can spend on pesticides, artificial manure and agricultural machinery. So, the science of agriculture may also show distorted data and broadcasters must be cautious about this aspect. And like in the field of medicine and health, the corporations that are interested in your specific audiences are potential sponsors for your programming. A responsible and responsive policy on sponsorship and advertising is necessary if your audiences are not to fall prey to corporate greed.

Information about simple and effective agricultural practices spreads through word of mouth amongst farmers. In the age of the Internet, educated agriculturists have access to information and opinions from around the world. As broadcasters, you will need to interact with local farmers and keep your eyes peeled for the resources that are available on the Net.

Some resources

Online learning and teaching materials:

http://croptechnology.unl.edu/index.shtml: A collection of animated online learning resources explaining the science behind crop technology. Structured lessons are arranged in broad topic areas, such as crop genetics, molecular genetic analysis and weed science.

http://www.ecifm.rdg.ac.uk/: A web-based learning package from the University of Reading. Topics include environmental degradation, sustainability and land protection. Each module has a list of references with links to full text where available.

Databases

http://agricola.nal.usda.gov/

This is a free extensive bibliographical database on agriculture produced by the US National Agricultural Library. Records can be searched by title, author, subject and keyword. Abstracts are available for many of the articles. This database is updated daily.

http://dendrome.ucdavis.edu/

Dendrome is a collection of resources in forest genetics and biotechnology. Resources include information on genetic maps, PCR primers, DNA sequences and software.

http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/agll/prtplnu.stm

This accesses the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) fertilizer online database and offers information on current fertilizer trends and documents on plant nutrition.

Electronic journals

AgBioForum (http://www.agbioforum.org/) is a quarterly full-text online journal on the economics and management of agricultural biotechnology, with short, non-technical articles on current research in agriculture, agricultural economics and biotechnology.

Forest and Shade Tree Pathology (http://www.forestpathology.org/index. html) is an online textbook for those studying forest and shade tree pathology, which offers information on fungi, decay, root and foliage diseases, rusts, cankers, wilts, viral and bacterial diseases, parasitic plants, abiotic diseases, declines, hazard trees and disease ecology and management.

Unasylva is an international journal of forestry produced by the FAO. It covers forestry and forest industries, including policy and planning, conservation and management, forest flora and fauna, siylviculture, agroforestry and rural development issues. http://www.fao.org/forestry/foris/webview/forestry2/ index.jsp?siteId=2342&sitetreeId=8571&langId=1&geoId=0

Discussion lists and newsgroups

Ecol-agric (http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/ecol-agric.html) is a newslist for all those working in organic/biological agriculture, offering a discussion forum, research news, and information on conferences and new publications.

Resources for practical skills and knowledge

The European Commission’s organic farming website (http://ec.europa.eu/ agriculture/qual/organic/index_en.htm) provides a range of information on the EU agricultural sector, including EU legislation and guidelines, and general information on the development of organic farming in the EU. DEFRA: Introduction to Farming http://www.defra.gov.uk/farm/farmindx. htm. This site gives information on farming policy, environmental issues, specialized information for farming sectors (for example, arable crops or milk production), and information on employment legislation in the industry.

 Development Gateway: This World Bank initiative features information for developing countries on social, economic, technical and scientific development. Agricultural topics are covered extensively. http://home. developmentgateway.org/

CGIAR Library Gateway: The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Virtual Library provides access to research on agriculture, hunger, poverty and the environment. The search engine taps into leading agricultural information databases, including the online libraries of all the CGIAR centres. http://vlibrary.cgiar.org/V?RN=974967558

The FAO manages databases and information systems containing over 50 alphabetically listed entries and provides comprehensive access to the organization’s agricultural information. Information related to agricultural biotechnology, machinery, animal health, pesticide management, produce processing and so on are available here. http://www.fao.org/waicent/portal/ glossary_en.asp

 Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (http://www.enaca.org/) offers the latest aquaculture news, forums, publications, and information on events and training. It addresses various topics such as genetics and biodiversity, health programmes, highland aquaculture, marine finfish aquaculture, shrimp farming and the environment. The site also offers links to databases and services such as marine finfish photos, FishBase, LarvalBase and Invasive Alien Species.

A good tutorial on resources is available at http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/ tutorial/agriculture/?sid=1339292&itemid=12029. It could be a starting point to help you organise the resources related to agriculture.

Factors to take care of

Information that is available on the Net is quite often not applicable to your country. Find out what crops and vegetables are cultivated in your country and focus only on those. Self-sufficiency in food is an important criterion for sustainable national development.

The timing of the broadcasting of your programmes plays an important role in their impact. Every crop has its own timing for planting, weeding, pruning, harvesting and so on. Scheduling your programmes based on the activities undertaken by the practitioners would give you more interested audiences.

Opportunities and precaution

Be careful about companies that are interested in agriculture. They would like you to promote their machinery, pesticides and fertilizers. Though you may get sponsorships from such companies, make sure that your editorial content is not influenced by the sponsorships and advertising that you get or the credibility of your channel will suffer in the long run.

Cultivating contacts

Agriculture is not only about farmers. The ministry of agriculture formulates policies relating to agriculture in your country. Get hold of all the documents and study them and keep yourself abreast of all new developments. The minister or the bureaucrats in the ministry may not have adequate experience in the realities of farming and may at times formulate policies that are counterproductive. Quite often, farmers are ignorant about the policies being formulated. You have to mediate in transferring the information from the ministries to the farmers.

Many countries have formal agricultural extension workers who are supposed to take the fruits of research to the farmers. Quite often, these workers are not motivated enough to do a good job. At times, they do not have adequate resources to do a good job. In both cases, you can be a catalyst by highlighting the good work some of them do and by providing some of your agriculture programmes (video and audio) as DVDs or CDs so that they can use these resources for their work in the field.

Fisheries and animal husbandry are mostly clubbed along with (and sometimes under) agriculture. If you are in a nation of islands or have extensive coastlines, fisheries would be a primary economic activity. Most fishermen have traditional knowledge about seas, lakes or rivers. When you communicate new findings, establish the new information in the context of the information that they already have. Use language they are familiar with, rather than the technical terminology that scientists are fond of using.