Students and teachers are not the only ones engaged in online activities during COVID-19 to keep themselves academically busy. Even farmers in rural Mysuru have switched over to online classes.
Over 600 farmers have participated in an online training and interaction on agricultural activities, launched by the District Agricultural Training Centre (DATC) at Naganahalli n Mysuru district, and their numbers are on the rise.
The DATC has been established to provide technical support to field functionaries and farmers across Karnataka and it has been conducting regular training events. “But the COVID-19 lockdown made it difficult to conduct regular classes and hence we went online,” explained G.H. Yogesh, Deputy Director, DATC.
So far, 27 online programmes have been completed and 616 farmers and 553 field officers of the Department of Agriculture have benefited from these online exercises.
DATC Mysuru was the first to launch the online training and now the government has directed that the same module may be replicated across the State.
All the training was done in collaboration with the University of Agricultural Sciences-Bengaluru, and the Institution of Agricultural Technologists.
The lockdown came into effect on March 25 but the DATC was up and running within a few days as the summer was off-season for agricultural activities and farmers would be on hand for the classes and the programmes, explained Mr. Yogesh.
It was a crucial time to take up issues related to soil and water conservation and online training came in handy as a new tool for DATC to reach out to the farmers. It cost the DATC only ₹5,000 towards the purchase of the necessary computer accessories.
Mr. Yogesh said that largely there were no issues and the learning experience suited the farmers. In the case of those unable to use mobile phones, the new generation helped them view proceedings, according to Mr. Yogesh.
Various subjects
The subjects included safe rainwater disposal methods like creating diversion channels, rainwater harvesting structures like farm pond or check dams, soil fertility improvement techniques like green manuring, etc.
One-hour classes were conduced on Mondays and Thursdays, and classes of two-and-a-half hours, for officers, were on Tuesdays and Fridays. The outreach in each of the exercise ranged from 25 to 230 participants.
Ramashetty, a farmer from Jayapura who participated in the classes, said the initiative is praiseworthy and he benefited a lot.
“However, this benefits only a category of farmers who hire workers, while those with small landholdings and do all the farm work do not have the luxury of watching it online,” he added. Also, there are network issues in remote areas but the initiative was a step in the right direction,” he said.
To make it more broad-based, Mr. Ramashetty suggested a repeat telecast or webcast of the programmes for small farmers who can watch after returning from work. He even a community radio, which would have more reach.
Mr. Yogesh said the training schedules were widely published on social media and WhatsApp groups, apart from the AIR and Doordarshan, and efforts will be made to reach more farmers.