‘Train agric extension officers to be ICT compliant’
Discussants at the ongoing 68th New Year School and Conference have said the use of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) to enhance modernisation of agriculture will only materialise if agricultural extension officers are retrained to be ICT compliant.
They said most of the officers on the field were not technologically savvy and would, therefore, not be able to convey what was entailed in ICT to farmers who relied on those officers for the needed information.
Training
Contributing to the topic: “Strengthening the agricultural value chain through ICT”, a lecturer at the Department of Agricultural Economics & Agribusiness of the School of Agriculture of the University of Ghana, Rev. Prof. Samuel Assuming-Brimpong, said there was the need for vigorous training of extension officers to enable them to transfer knowledge to farmers.
“Most of our extension staff were trained in the traditional methods and most of them are not able to handle ICT. So they need retraining,” he explained.
He said ICT was needed now more than ever if agriculture could be enhanced, as the ratio of farmers to an extension worker remained very high.
Ways to use ICT
Prof. Assuming-Brimpong said there were a number of ways in which ICT could be used to enhance agriculture, including agricultural market information system, modern farm production techniques and rural farm extension services.
“These can be shared easily to help farmers,” he said, adding that another area where the use of ICT was crucial was pest management.
He explained that farmers had very little information on pest management, saying that without ICT, by the time an extension officer got to the affected farmer, the pest would have destroyed the crops.
“But with ICT, within a short period it can be controlled,” he noted.
ICT and farmers
The Private Sector Advisor of the USAID in Ghana, Ms Pearl Ackah, said there was the need to design ICT programmes with the local people in mind.
She said the term ICT should not be imagined as a sophisticated machine, saying that radio and television were also part of ICT designed to disseminate information.
On extension services, she said there were new ways through ICT that could enhance the value chain in agriculture, citing, for instance, the ‘hello tractor’, the ‘farm radio’ and the use of mobile money.
Referring to constraints, Ms Ackah identified illiteracy as a major factor militating against the use of ICT, saying, for instance, that due to illiteracy, messages had to be composed in 14 local languages to be able to get to the farmers.
She said through ICT, farmers could be informed about the type of weather to be expected and what they needed to know or do at any given time.
Farmers not ready
The President of the Federation of Associations of Ghanaian Exporters, Mr Anthony Sikpa, was, however, of the belief that Ghanaian farmers were not yet ready to use ICT tools to speed up their production processes.
“Their skill sets must first be built and certification must be introduced in the agricultural system. Insisting on the use of ICT will lead to increased cost to most farmers,” he contended.
He said there was the need to bring all value-chain actors together and help them recognise the need to work interdependently for mutual benefit.
Mr Sikpa noted with concern that most value chains were formed with very few actors, stressing that there was total absence of participatory planning, execution, monitoring and evaluation.
He called for the need to empower farmers to adopt the new lessons coming out from research institutions using the hands-on approach.