On 20 December 2017, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted a resolution which declared the years 2019-2028 to be the Decade of Family Farming. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the Decade of Family Farming will aim at focusing systematically on cross cutting and multi-dimensional issues which are of concern to family farmers. Family farming is generally understood to be a type of farming whereby inherited land
As the United Nations launches the Decade of Family Farming, a spotlight is drawn to the role of family farmers in feeding themselves and their communities, stewarding environmental protection, and shepherding rural development. Rural people cannot do this work alone or unsupported, and communication is a unifying force – from radio and mobile phones, to mobile applications, websites, videos, and more. For the past few months we have been collecting
The Feed the Future Developing Local Extension Capacity project (DLEC) piloted a multi-channel, multi-stakeholder approach leveraging video-enabled extension, a national IVR question and answer (Q&A) forum, a mobile-based farmer and extension agent survey, and the Fall Armyworm Monitoring and Early Warning System (FAMEWS) – a mobile application deployed by the MoALR and FAO. DLEC is implementing the pilot in collaboration with the Feed the Future Ethiopia Value Chain Activity (FTF-EVCA)
The story goes like this. In 1975 George Atkins, then a farm radio broadcaster with CBC, was travelling down a rural road in Zambia. The group he was with included a number of African broadcasters, there as part of a workshop for farm broadcasters George was working on. George, ever curious, asked about their latest radio shows. One of the broadcasters on the bus with him, a man named Abdul
