When I was a research fellow in communication at an advanced research institute, I was often approached for advice on how their research program or consortium can scale up dissemination of technology options. I found that many scientists were still on a technology-push mode so I suggested that a first step would be for them and their research partners to answer these key questions:

1. What are your objectives?
- to inform?
- to motivate, change attitudes?
- to change practice?

2. Who is your primary audience?
- farmers?
- extension workers?
- students?

I suggested going back to the basics because in the course of our conversations, I was quite surprised to hear that to disseminate x technologies for farmers, their consortium partners developed a video on physiology of the rice plant and a complicated conference poster. Clearly, a video on a scientific process and an information-rich conference poster are meant for graduate students, researchers and perhaps commercial farmers. A small farmer with limited education, poor eyesight, and cultivating less than 1 ha of land will require simpler messages and extension materials that position the benefits of the recommended options. Sadly, the above questions never got addressed because there was a lack of commitment to walk that extra mile. At the review workshop, I learned that the donor was unhappy because the project could not show impact.

Often, I find it useful to remind our scientist colleagues that there are information barriers and they can add value to their scientific research though synthesis, distillation and communication. I hope the sections below will be useful.

Information barriers

Between science and practice is a range of information barriers (Norton and Mumford, 1982), namely, dissemination and reception. A dissemination gap occurs when information does not reach farmers due to physical and logistical constraints, lack of transport, and semantic differences. Or the information may have reached farmers but they are unable to use it. Effective communication is said to have taken place only when senders and receivers have converged and when the information sent is received, understood, internalized and utilized by the receivers (Schramm, 1973; McQuail and Windahl, 1993; Severin and Tankard, 1992; Rogers, 1995).

Adding value to scientific research

To add value to the large volumes of research already done and published, as well as new research being conducted, results of research have to be taken further. They have to be synthesized, distilled, and communicated to farmers. As Gates (1999) emphasized, “Knowledge is power! Power comes not from knowledge kept but from knowledge shared.”

Communication will add value to rich biological research that has been done and is going on. For communication sciences to be effectively employed, there is a need for a truly collaborative and inter-disciplinary effort to initially discover the real problem and find out how farmers are dealing with them. Such details are required to enable the process of distillation, intervention design and delivery.