Lifelong Learning for Farmers
Author: Karen Speirs
Article Date: 6 Mar 2008
The Commonwealth of Learning harnesses the potential of technology to help improve livelihoods
Alagan Muthammal lives in a marginalised community in the village of Uppukottai, Tamil Nadu. A 64-year-old illiterate woman; she was widowed a decade ago. Although Ms Muthammal has three sons and two daughters, she lives alone. Being an older woman she could not get an agricultural job and used to scavenge for leftover grain in the field at harvest time and sell it for a meager amount to local traders. During much of the year, she would only eat one meal a day.
Almost two years ago, Ms Muthammal visited a computer kiosk in her local village. The computer centre is part of the Lifelong Learning for Farmers programme, which links local farmers with educators, who provide up-to-date information about farming, and with banks, who provide the funding. Ms Muthammal joined the local farmers association in the village and started to use the computer to learn about dairy farming and how to market dairy products. Seeing that she had taken some training, the State Bank of India granted Ms Muthammal a loan and for the first time in her life, she was able to acquire assets.
Ms Muthammal now owns two cows and two calves and has a steady income from the sale of dairy products. Her standard of living has vastly improved. By gaining access to information, she has vaulted above the poverty line to become a self-sufficient member of society.
Ms Muthammal is just one of several hundred farmers who have participated in Lifelong Learning for Farmers since the programme was introduced in four villages in southern India in 2004. It is an initiative of the Commonwealth of Learning (COL), an intergovernmental organisation established by the Commonwealth Heads of Government in 1988 to encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education, knowledge, resources and technologies.
Travelling the Last Mile
Lifelong Learning for Farmers helps rural communities find appropriate technology-based open and distance education to improve their livelihoods. The programme is a response to a critical need: the wealth of information resulting from agricultural research and development often fails to travel the last mile to villages in the developing world where it is most needed.
While governments face challenges in funding adequate agricultural extension, globalisation is creating increasing competition for poor rural farmers. In India, there is one agricultural extension worker for every 1,150 farmers. Add in "landless labourers" and each extension worker has the impossible task of serving 2,500 people.
COL has been exploring whether technology can help scale up extension services to address this need. Many villages in India are equipped with information and communications technologies (ICT) kiosks as a result of governmental or commercial initiatives. Since each kiosk provides its village with internet and telephone connections, the possibility exists for these kiosks to provide useful information and bridge that last mile to the individual farmer. However, the impact of these kiosks has been limited by the top-down manner in which they were originally introduced. By simply conveying knowledge on new agricultural technologies from researcher to farmer, this system ignored the experience and innovation that farmers had to offer.
A new model based on self-directed learning
With this in mind, Lifelong Learning for Farmers introduced a different model. Farmers were encouraged to form an association and create their own vision of development for their village. This could be acquiring better livestock, growing new crops or improving the way they market their produce. Those ideas often generate simple questions - How do I identify a good cow? How do I process excess milk produce? How do I keep wild boars off my land when they are a protected species? How can I get my produce to market in good condition?
The next step is to get those with information to work together to answer these questions. In Tamil Nadu, COL helped to create a consortium that included universities that specialise in agriculture, veterinary sciences, open learning, engineering, technology and social science. ICT kiosks are used to link the farmers to this consortium. Farmers are prepared to pay for useful information, such as very local weather forecasts. The commercial kiosk operator and franchisee, usually a local youth, becomes a stakeholder in the project with an interest in providing information that helps to make the initiative sustainable.
In Tamil Nadu, village kiosks tend to have a computer with a digital camera, uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units and printers. A telecommunications company provides an intranet portal, videoconferencing facilities and some generic content, but the local franchisee has to develop local content in response to demand.
The fourth partner in this project is the commercial banks. The banks in India are being encouraged by the government to increase rural lending. Currently there is very little lending from banks to the rural economy because of high transaction costs and low loan repayment rates. The Lifelong Learning for Farmers model offers ways to overcome these hurdles. Information provided through ICT kiosks improves the knowledge and capability of farmers. This, in turn, improves productivity, return on investment and repayment of loans, which also enlarges the market for bank credit for small farmers and landless labourers.
The State Bank of India links credit to a contract farming system, putting the associations in contact with potential buyers it has identified. Once an association and a buyer reach a trade agreement that defines price and quality, the bank gives credit to the association and its members. The advantages of scale and a direct link to the buyers create an efficient marketing system and reduce price spread.
Knowledge is power
Having access to the latest knowledge is an integral element in Lifelong Learning for Farmers. While learning about dairy management, Ms Muthammal came across the term “mineral salt”. She asked the ICT kiosk operator, Arulraj Gnanakulanadai whether this is the common salt used in the household kitchen. Using the web camera, Mr Gnanakulanadai, captured the questions asked by Ms Muthammal and others in her group. He then sent them to an expert in the city of Chennai, nearly 400 km from the village. The answer was relayed via video email, so that the illiterate farmers could understand the information. Ms Muthammal and her neighbours learned about how to use mineral salts in fodder management and animal health.
When an outbreak of Foot and Mouth disease hit the region in early 2007, Ms Muthammal and her neighbours communicated with veterinary doctors by video email and learned how to control the disease and protect their stock.
Signs of success
Lifelong Learning for Farmers is a success by many measures. The State Bank of India has made loans of about $US 200,000 to 120 villagers, with approximately the same amount in the pipeline for 100 more villagers. Another 300 people are preparing loan applications. This is in a region where one of the villages had previously been blacklisted by the banks because of a poor loan repayment record.
About 60 per cent of the farmers involved are women. In the past, buying a cow was traditionally the men's responsibility; they would buy it and then hand it over to the women to care for it. Lifelong Learning for Farmers has taught both women and men how to select and purchase healthy cows, how to insure the cows and how to claim insurance if a cow dies. When a woman recovered the insured amount after her cow died, her fellow villagers were amazed. Insurance was a new concept for them.
Some 500 villagers regularly attend the ICT-based learning sessions. Initially the communities were hesitant to use the Internet, but once they started to hear local voices and see familiar faces, they relaxed and lost their fear of the technology.
Learning materials have also been developed about topics such as managing a dairy shed, nutrition management in dairy, quality milk production, agricultural techniques and biofertiliser production. A number of CDs, newsletters and internet/intranet presentations have been completed.
Lifelong Learning for Farmers is changing the lives of many people, according to Dr Patrick Spaven, a UK-based professional external evaluator who recently completed a case study about the programme for COL.
"For anyone who met the stakeholders and visited the villages, it would be difficult to come away without a very positive impression,” said Dr Spaven.
“The optimism and excitement among the stakeholders was palpable. This even included hard-nosed banking officials. The interests of all the stakeholders are being addressed and the mutual awareness of this among the consortium members underpins their confidence in the project."
Self-replication is the ultimate goal
One of the goals of Lifelong Learning for Farmers is that its success spawns replication in other villages and regions. Three neighbouring villages in Tamil Nadu have formed associations for implementing the model, with minimal help from Lifelong Learning for Farmers. A local cooperative-model non-governmental organisation (NGO) with 5,000 women has asked to join the process.
It is important to recognise that this is development without donors. COL has spent less than $US 80,000, mostly on local consultancies. All other resources have come from routine local sources, notably the loans from the bank to the farmers.
COL’s experiences with Lifelong Learning for Farmers in southern India has demonstrated that open and distance learning can strengthen the development process among illiterate, semi-literate and marginalised segments of society. The key is to place learning in the context of the social and economic value chain.
The success experienced in India led to the launch of Lifelong Learning for Farmers in Sri Lanka in 2007. Using the same four partners as in India – farmers, ICT kiosks, educators and bank – the programme is already demonstrating success. Farmers are learning to cultivate more profitable crops: one farmer in the Hambantota region saw his income rise by a factor of six when he switched from growing mixed vegetables to bananas. Local women are finding employment in a laboratory where banana plants are being produced using tissue culture technology.
Lifelong Learning for Farmers is also being adapted and introduced in Jamaica, Kenya, Mauritius and Papua New Guinea. This fairly simple process, is providing access to knowledge through open and distance learning, and proving to be a powerful tool for positive change.