EEI, Hyderabad Organized Training Programme on Effective Transfer of Technology through Mobiles for Extension Officers of Agri and Allied Sectors from 4th – 8th July, 2022
Mobile phone usage in third world countries is playing a vital role for the enhancement of farmers business towards agriculture. Recently, communication through mobile phones is considered very important in enhancing farmers' access to better understand agricultural market situation. Farming communities appreciate mobile phone as easy, fast and convenient way to communicate and get prompt answers of respective problems. Nowadays, the mobile phone has generated an opportunity for the farmers especially to get the information about marketing and weather. Through this important technology, they directly keep in touch with market personals and offer their produce with reasonable prices. Mobile phones have provided an opportunity to the farmers to communicate directly with market brokers and customers for sell their product in good price. The use of mobile phone also keep them aware for weather forecast for agriculture input application like fertilizer and pesticides which might be affected by unforeseen seen disasters as communicated by meteorological department. This device has given new direction and approach to farmers to communicate directly and share about recent advances with each other which is a curtain raiser to Farmer Led Extension. Keeping in view of importance of improving the capacities of Extension workers on Effective Transfer of Technology through mobiles for extension officers of agri and allied sectors, a 5 day Online training programme is organized at EEI, Hyderabad to improve the knowledge and skills of the extension functionaries in the area of “Effective Transfer of Technology through mobiles for extension officers of agri and allied sectors” from 4th to 8th July 2022. The programme was coordinated by Dr. R. Vasantha, Professor, and Dr. I. S. Rao, University head and senior professor, EEI, Hyderabad. Middle level Extension functionaries from Agriculture, Veterinary and Animal husbandary, Sericulture and Agri Engineering from Telangana, Karnataka, Tamilnadu, Kerala, Odisha and Andhrapradesh took part in the programme. Training took inputs and rich experience from speakers of diverse backgrounds who exposed the trainees on tools and techniques of Audio and video recording through mobiles, emergence of MOJO opportunities and future challenges in Agriculture, video journalism: effective video making by using smart phone, creative writing skills, mobile apps in the service of farmers. In 85 percent of sessions, hands on training was given to trainees. The practical sessions were given below:
- Hands on training on use of social media for transfer of technology to farmers
- Hands on training on various tools of mobile journalism such as Kinemaster, Inshot, Canva, Open camera, Google street view, Cinema FV 5 lite, Snapseed and Augmented reality (AR)
- Hands on training on radio script writing and talk delivery.
- Hands on training on Audio jingles preparation
Visible impact of training
Trainees have developed the following during the training programme
Kinemaster - 20
Inshot - 9
Canva -17
Google street view - 1
Augmented reality (AR) - 10
Audio jingles - 6
Radio talks -6
M. Jagan Mohan Reddy, Director, EEI speaking on the occasion of valedictory highlighted the key role played by mobiles in lowering transaction costs and raising the income-levels of farmers, by efficiently addressing their immediate agricultural-information requirements across India. He added that Mobile phones enable farmers to access information from a host of information providers such as scientists, cooperative committee office-bearers, input dealers, government agriculture extension officers, market-commission agents/traders, veterinary doctors, and so on. He advised trainees to develop messages using all the apps learnt in training and share with farmers. Meelipandey, VAS, Dept of veterinary, Odisha said that she learnt much on Video and audio editing, Canva and kinemaster which is very useful for them in sending messages in an innovative way to farmers. M. Sunitharani, AO, Kamareddy opined that Jingles that were learnt and prepared in EEI training are very useful to them as they can send information to AEOs and farmers.
