This time, we have 5 lessons in Extension (Ex): (1) grammar, (2) media, (3) digital technology, (4) credit, and (5) options.
Wikipedia says “School Of The Air[1]” I checked with my favorite dictionary, and yes, the grammatically correct phrase is “of the air[2]” (TheFreeDictionary.com).
Radio & Internet As Media For Extension
I have been reading Carlson B Alelis’ feature, “Unified School-On-Air, A ‘Beginning Of Empowering Rice Farmers’[3]” (17 March 2021, PIA), an initiative of the Department of Agriculture (DA) Region 6 launched in Iloilo City 16 March.
With my background as a BS Agriculture graduate major in Agricultural Education, UP '65, and with my own 40-year old “Theory of Communication for Development,” I can hardly imagine how any PH School Of The Air can educate farmers on the “right smart technologies (that) will surely empower them and make them competitive with (farmers in) other countries.” Radio is limited, all sound and fury – try dramatizing “System of Rice Intensification” via audio!
Internet. Yes, “School-On-Lap” is best programming for aggie extension! Why do you have to think of the farmer as old and/or uneducable?
(Upper image of “Cyber Extension[4]” from Tunza Eco Generation)
CREDIT GRAB
So now I am thinking of the Agricultural Credit Policy Council (ACPC) coming up with a budget of, say, P15 million, for the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) of the DA to create a digital Knowledge Bank for training. I call it “CREDIT GRAB” – for “Community-Related Ecological Development via Information Technology with Government Resources Aimed at Agri-Business.” A farmer applying for any interest-free loan with ACPC must pass CREDIT GRAB field training, or assessment, before s/he can be granted that loan. This is to make sure that the loan applicant’s farming is more or less guaranteed to be successful as it considers most if not all the technical & resource knowledge options in farming, from seed to spoon. CREDIT GRAB will also package a farmer’s course on credit using quite a few of the credit success stories on record.
Farming Options
What about “PalayCheck?” Options is the digital key. How will the training on farming options via CREDIT GRAB impact, say, irrigated rice?
Fundamentally, the already-existing website Pinoy Rice Knowledge Bank says PalayCheck “presents the best key technology and management practices as Key Checks[5]” (Pinoyrice.com). So, PalayCheck is thinking for the farmer, not the farmer thinking for himself after studying his options in technologies and practices as may be applied in his location!
Game: On his laptop, the farmer has the right to press the Enter key where he thinks best!
Changer: Farming is not all rice; so, the CREDIT GRAB Knowledge Bank must contain rice-basedfarming systems (plural). Today, PalayCheck continues to imprison the farmer with a single outmoded rice technical framework and teach him not tothink more!@517
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