As the rice crisis is being felt around the globe, I thought it is timely to think about how communication science can be harnessed to help achieve the long-term goal of food security. I have alluded to this in earlier posts, such as the one on the ACIAR scoping study on brown planthopper/virus disease management.

Key informant interviews with policy makers in Vietnam and a university president in Morocco revealed that agricultural development projects could have wide ramifications. Countries aspire for food security in order to achieve the ultimate goal of social stability. Whether the crop is faba bean in Morocco or rice in Indonesia or Vietnam, helping farmers produce enough food for home consumption and sell in the market remains a key objective. One of them noted, “Many farmers are the poorest of the poor. Without help, these rural residents will migrate to the city and cause more social problems.”

Rice farmer on way home after field visit, Central Java, Indonesia

Donors and policy makers may raise the key question: How can communication science be harnessed to help achieve food security? For a new initiative we are developing to help rice farmers in Asia reduce their pre-production crop losses, I was asked to list the essential communication tasks. I came up with the following:

  1. Design and conduct FGDs and farmer surveys to document baselines and post-intervention changes to monitor impact of the project outputs on farmers’ pest management decisions.
  2. Develop the capacity of national agricultural research and extension systems (NARES) partners in farm survey techniques, data processing, analyses, interpretations, participatory approaches, and scaling up processes.
  3. Assist NARES in planning, implementation, and monitoring of scaling up initiatives using a participatory approach in developing multi-stakeholder partnerships, designing and pretesting prototype communication materials, conducting formative and summative evaluation.
  4. Document and report all scaling up processes, activities and results across countries involved in the project in print (paper for publication in peer-reviewed journal) and niche blog.
  5. Participate in tracking the impact of project outputs.

What other tasks do you suggest should be included? Please post your comments.