Agricultural Communications Over the Novel Plarforms for Development

The World on the whole and its developing countries are progressing very fast on agrarian base adopting futuristic technologies to the ever-increasing population. Agriculture is very much benefited by agricultural communications. Agricultural communications like any other mass media are powerful tools for progress in the agricultural sector.

Conventional media were having less number of circulations and were of not much popular among the stakeholders. However, these magazines and the newsletters maintain their stronghold to a limited extent in rural areas. These media are highly subsidized and are getting printed in the newsprints for the economy. Some of the corporate and magazines are bringing out magazines in good quality art paper with multicolour editions. Very low priced publications remaining in the market compared to any other entertainment and entertainment magazines.

Every government has its own agricultural communication magazines and newspapers which are aimed at communicating the information to the farmers. Compared to the government and semi-government communications, non-governmental organisations have much more coverage among the farming community with their creative newsletters and magazines. In a multilingual country like India, the communications are mostly in the vernacular language both from the government agencies as well as non-governmental agencies.

Role of media in rural development

The role of agricultural communications is mainly to develop rural progress through Information sharing. It is also a media for change. Based on these communications the acceptance of the farmers for the new technologies and tools as well as alternative crops is increased through media influence strategies.
Non-governmental agricultural communications are the social face of organizations, financed by the advertisement of agrotech companies. Governmental communications are running by the public funding of the government.
Articles in this magazines range from agricultural news and happenings new technology introduction success stories of farmers and entrepreneur as well as business opportunities and market trade.

Whether it is a new seed, fertilizer or a handheld manual tool or a mobile technology app with artificial intelligence back-up decision support system, these media have a prominent role in communicating it to the farmers. Similarly, curious happenings in the field or crop will be communicated to the other stakeholders including research scientists and commercial establishments.

The role played by the agricultural magazines in the socio-political scenario, forming a link between the naive and fearsome farmers with the authoritative and bureaucratic government set up.

Android mobile communications and YouTube channel ways agricultural channels have become popular among farmers. Unlike the year internet communications, these are more powerful among farmers because of the hand-held mobile phone with almost every farmer.

Non-governmental organisations, as well as highly enthusiastic communicators, have performed very well in the new online mobile communication platform.
Highest popularity among farmers is WhatsApp and YouTube communications. These are creating strong impacts which were created a few years back by the radio and television programs on agriculture.

At present, there is very very less audience for the radio and views for the agricultural programs on television. What compared to this there are much more viewers all YouTube channels and the WhatsApp communications.

Even though we feel that at present the mobile communications have no proper standards or timings and periodicity, still maintain deeper penetration into the farming community.

Major areas which these communications cover usually include new varieties, hi-tech technologies, gardening and vegetable production as well as recipes from the farm produce.

Connecting and networking the mobile communication media and traditional magazines as well as newsletters by integrating content will certainly benefit the farming community to a large extent.

This is now a transition period where the readers of conventional print media are slowly transforming the as mobile communicators. Like the traditional media, the mobile communications are made to a process where the reader all the viewers has the opportunity to interact with the sender so that he can clear his doubts and utilising knowledge more effectively.

An effective strategy would be a print media followed by social promotion as well as digital communication involving visual and sound media such as the YouTube and the podcast forming a complete digital experience to visualise and demonstrate the various technologies to the stakeholders.

Most of the facilities over mobile communication media are through digital applications. Mobile applications integrate scientific knowledge and artificial intelligence tools to facilitate farmers requirements.

Need of the hour is to develop more and more stronger and valuable agricultural communications to the farmers and stakeholders for increasing the productivity and quality of the crops as well as for dating the value addition process by which more and more products will enter into the market and premium prices thereby helping the farmers to prosper as well as benefit each and everyone in the value chain all the agricultural enterprise.

Periodicity of the publications ranges from weekly, fortnightly, monthly and quarterly durations.

Cropping seasons and farmers anxieties have to be anticipated well and such coherent attitudes by the farm media will bring about developmental thrust and can become a change agent.

It is not wrong if we say that these magazines are maintaining the lifeline of the farmers. These magazines not only encourage the farmers for taking up competitive cropping but at the same time, they also keep-up the farmer's enthusiasm and pacify them to face the future in the event of non-encouraging market price and performance of the crops low due to seasonal changes and natural calamities.

While you are engaged in technology transfer and farm communication as well as agricultural content development and advertisement, you have to come up with powerful platforms which can bring about change among the farming community. This would facilitate food security of the nation on the one hand and profitable cropping and development prospects. This could be effectively achieved through mobile phones and internet communications in integration with conventional media.