Information and Communication opportunities for Technology Transfer and Linkages*
Dr.Alexander G. Flor
Abstract
All over Asia, national agricultural extension systems have been severely emasculated by four factors: the abolition of the national agricultural extension system; decentralization or devolution of extension services; the top-down perception of agricultural extension; and rivalry between research and extension in the agricultural technology process. These trends have also severely weakened the potential contributions of information and communication technology to agricultural extension. However, the existing information and communication environment poses new opportunities for agricultural extension.
The information and communication environment has elements of both the old and the new; the conventional and the sophisticated; the analogue and the digital. Conventional media include analogue AM and FM radio, VHF and UHF television, the print media, video, cinema, and indigenous communication media. Digital media cover mobile phones, personal computers, the Internet, email, imaging technology, digital audio-video, and digital broadcasts, even cable television. The agricultural sector has lagged behind in exploring and tapping the potentials that information and communication technology has to offer. These potentials range: from the sharing and re-use of data, research findings, lessons learned and best practices among research and extension institutions to developing quick response mechanisms for agricultural and natural resources crises situations; from permitting informed decision making among our agricultural officials to sounder policy making among our legislators; from improving the extension delivery systems in the rural areas to bringing eCommerce to our farmers.
Basically, ICT facilitates two elements critical in the Research-Extension-Farmer-Market Interface and technology transfer process: information access and networking. The storage and retrieval of research results facilitates information access while telecommunications facilitates networking. In both elements, several strategies and approaches have been employed. Among these strategies are: riding the tide of popular media; community-based/ participatory media; capacity building of support agencies; knowledge management; and employing a programmatic approach to ICT undertakings. Technology transfer modalities include: conventional and digital broadcasting; comic books; the use of low-end ICT; geographic information system or GIS; and knowledge networks that tap a wide range of ICT products ranging from multimedia CDROMs to Web-based services.
The existing development assistance environment is most favorable for tapping information and communication technology for agricultural extension and technologytransfer. The Okinawa Summit of G7/G8 nations has established the primacy of bridging the Digital Divide in the international development assistance agenda. The World Bank
Full paper available in PDF format
*Paper presented during the Expert Consultation on Agricultural Extension, Research-Extension-Farmer Interface and Technology Transfer, Food and Agriculture Organization Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, Thailand.
