Recommendations for improving Media coverage and Communication of Agriculture and Rural Development issues
v Provide financial and logistical support to media houses to employ or pay journalists specifically dedicated to reporting on agriculture and rural development issues. Providing such journalists with computers, cameras, recorders etc will save reporters from competing for scarce resources in media houses, and help them to produce Multimedia stories in ARD (as most media go online) in order to enable the news and information produced to be searchable.
v Establish agriculture reporting awards in different countries to interest journalists to cover agriculture.
v Organise workshops and modules to educate journalists, editors and owners of media houses on the importance of agriculture to their audiences and why it is important to have more agriculture reporting. This could include making journalists and media owners understand issues in agriculture like women and gender, climate change, commercial farming, organic Vs conventional etc
v Buying of agriculture stories from journalists and distributing these stories to media houses for free would go a long in encouraging journalists to report agriculture and rural development issues and diverse media to run such stories.
v Encourage the media to give more space to agricultural and rural development issues though lobbying, reading and commenting on their work, etc
v Translating agriculture English media reports into vernacular for grassroots farmers who can’t listen or read English is also important.
v Improving communication of agriculture issues means farmers being able to access and understand the information covered in the media. It is therefore important to help buy newspapers or photocopy/ record and provide articles on agriculture to farmers groups, including relevant translations.
v Buying time and space in media to run supplements or to broadcast agriculture stories and issues where popular media houses are unwilling to offer the space is a strategy to consider.
v Training farmers, scientists and government workers on how to target, document and easily avail information on agriculture to journalists, as well maintain good relations with reporters and program sections is also important.
v Videos on unchanging agricultural practices and issues can be produced and translated for farmers to learn the most pressing issues relating to better farming methods, markets, examples of planting or breeding types and practices etc. i.e. provide practical information to farmers in a visual format they can access many times to better understand the message in the content.
v Develop mobile applications that can help farmers access news and information on agriculture and rural development on their mobile phones, since they are the mainstream media for most Ugandans.
Conclusions
v The Media can play an important role in Agriculture development through providing relevant information at different times on diverse issues to a wide audience, if well targeted and utilized by all stakeholders. It is important to look at media as different from journalism, and know that the wider media operates on commercial or other interests.
v Also, improved coverage of agricultural issues will be most helped if expanded on by other efforts that make such news and information available to farmers and other stakeholders at the right time, in the right language and context.
v If Journalists, ARD practitioners and communication specialists work together to document, analyse and disseminate information and knowledge on ARD on a dedicated basis, the role of the media in ARD will become more visible and viable.
Risdel Kasasira is Special projects writer and Reporter at Daily Monitor as well as a Researcher with Ultimate Media Consult Tel. +256782308901 rkasasira(at)monitor.co.ug kasasira(at)ultimatemediaconsult.com
Gerald Businge is a Multimedia Journalist Journalist/communication specialist, Manager and researcher at Ultimate Media Consult (U) Ltd Tel. +25772627676/ +256751627676/ +256414593555; P. O Box 36665, Kampala, Uganda
businge(at)ultimatemediaconsult.com www.geraldbusinge.com www.weinformers.net