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Farmers are like an old box of locked up wealth of information. Unfortunately, we ourselves don’t know that we have so much knowledge. Others have made us to believe that we have to only ‘hear’ and ‘read’ and that we aren’t capable of ‘talking’ and ‘writing’. If we, farmers, are able to come out of this mental block, with the active cooperation of concerned scientists and in-depth study of the world around us, we ourselves can fulfil our information needs to a good extent.

A course for training

So far, we have conducted 3 farm and rural journalism workshops in three districts, in calm village centres. A lot of pre-planning has gone into this. First, we called for applications, a sample write-up on anything farmers feel strongly about. Based on the answers to our questionnaire and their write-up, the trainees are carefully selected.

Local farmers participate in a series of preparations, meetings held at village centres. This convinces them that this is something very essential for them. They are requested to host one or two trainees during the workshop. This arrangement facilitates a dialogue and exchange of farming knowledge between the host and trainee. In the 4-day workshops, the trainees get off-class training too. Apart from dialogue type sessions on ‘identification of subjects’, ‘how to write’, ‘development journalism’, ‘farm journalism and environment’ etc., there used to be three writing assignments, followed by evaluation and suggestion for improvement.

The last assignment is one where the trainees are taken to a nearby farm. Using the knowledge and tips they received in the last three days, they have to interview and collect information pertaining to one selected subject seen in the farm. Next day, it is evaluated. During the evaluation, one by one, some trainees are asked to read their article aloud. Positive criticism and specific suggestions are invited from fellow trainees. In conclusion the panel of faculties would give their advice. If 10 trainees read their work, all the 25 will get at least 40 good tips.

The effects

Out of 76 trainees devided over three workshops, at least a dozen write often, not only to our magazine, but to others as well. The subjects they have selected are such that it would otherwise unnoticed by the media. After the workshop, a trainee could identify a subject in the ‘lateral pipe’ that was fast replacing the troublesome ‘emitters’ in drip irrigation. The success story of a farmer who has shown that instead of a pair of bullocks you can very well plough almost similarly by a single bullock was another local trainee’s scoop. In our last 6 years of experience, there were hand-counts of such sweet successes.

-Shree Padre

In ILEIA Newsletter . March 1994

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