Dr. Rajesh Kumar
Incharge Media Centre
Email ID - baumediacentre@gmail.com
ICT is the backbone of Digital India. Bihar Agricultural University is also exploring and utilising the advances in ICT for effective technology transfer among the farming community in general and the rural youth in particular. As a part of its extension activities, BAU has initiated number of ICT based educational initiatives with farmers as its clients. Few of them include video conferencing, technical video production and dissemination, Kisan Helpline, Kisan Gyan Rath and Community Radio. It is worthwhile to share the experiences of BAU in field application of these initiatives.
Video Conferencing
The online video-conferencing facility enabled through the project “Agriculture Knowledge Dissemination System” is providing emerging opportunities for two-way interaction among the scientists, extension workers and farming community of the state. The scientists of the KVKs are also updated with new research and technology from the university headquarters through this facility. All the KVKs under the jurisdiction of the university is connected to the video conferencing. The scientists are regularly trained the farmers related to crop protection, package of practice, rural Agri-entrepreneurship, animal husbandry, milk production, fisheries, honey-bee production, mushroom production and other important remunerative avenues to increase the per capita income and progressiveness of the farmers.
Production and dissemination of technical videos
Media centre, BAU, has released above 475 videos on package of practices and/or modern skills of agriculture and allied areas. The university has produced over 130 hours of video content on important cropping practices on cereals, fruit, flower, plantation crops, animal husbandry and fisheries and plans to develop videos on all aspects of agricultural development, including processing and marketing. The videos developed by the university so far are on the various aspects including Goat farming, Poultry, Commercial cultivation of oyster mushroom, Azolla
cultivation, Integrated Farming System, Honeybee rearing, Major Pest and diseases in Rice: Identification and Control, Soil testing: When, Why and How, Strawberry cultivation in Bihar. The videos are also available on YouTube and got good response from the interested farmers. The web analytics of the YouTube channels reveal that Goat Farming had the largest viewership share, followed by Poultry farming and bee keeping.
Dissemination of technical videos through low-cost SD card
All the technical videos developed by BAU are freely available on YouTube but in rural areas farmers have no access to the internet facilities. Keeping this in mind MANAGE, Hyderabad and BAU, Sabour in a collaborative mode initiated the project titled "Digital Videos for farmers by using mobile phones with low-cost SD-cards”. This aims at ensuring 24X7 farmers’ access to the technical videos developed by BAU. As a part of this collaborated initiative, technical videos developed were loaded into the low-cost SD cards in 3GP format and such SD cards were distributed among the farmers. Bihar agricultural university has made available thousands of Secure Digital (SD) cards containing technical videos developed by the university among the farmers having smartphones in all the 25 districts under its jurisdiction through the Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs).
Kisan Gyan Rath: It is an important integrated mobile medium for providing expert guidance, consultancy and technology illustration to the farmers on their doorsteps through audio-visual means. The Kishan Gayan Rath in addition to technology dissemination facility, also has a fully equipped unit for onsite soil analysis, interpretation and issuing of soil health cards to the farmers.
