Farmer Videos III
Lead Organization:
Agro-Insight
Community of Practice:
Countries:
Ecuador Bolivia Peru
Duration:
5/2020—5/2021
Overview:
This project seeks to produce three, high-quality farmer learning videos, produced with selected McKnight Foundation grantees in Ecuador. Topics for AEI (agroecological intensification) may include, but not be limited to 1) alternative food systems, 2) managing seed potato degeneration, 3) managing pests of lupin, and 4) food assistance and farmers.
The videos will be made available to McKnight grantees in Ecuador in several formats: MP4 videos to show on laptops, as audio tracks for radio stations, as video format (3gp) to play on cell phones and as fact sheets (one-page PDF summaries of the video). The videos will also be published on a DVD in Spanish and Quechua for the grantees to use in communities. Agro-Insight will add three other appropriate videos made in other countries to the DVD. The videos will be translated into English and French (for audiences outside of Latin America) and all versions will be hosted on www.accessagriculture.org, where they will be available for free download by the global community. They may also later be translated to other languages, enhancing outreach, and all will be farmer-to-farmer and how-to. Each one will share information with a rural audience about how to use an technical or social (e.g. marketing) innovation chosen in coordination with the grantees and CCRP/Andes.
These videos will be short, about 15 minutes, that will start with a lively introduction of the problem at hand (e.g. problems with potato seed health) and then move rapidly into a set of farmer-approved solutions (e.g. how to store seed potatoes on farm). All of the McKnight grantees in Ecuador have several years’ experience working with Andean communities doing participatory, collaborative research on agroecological intensification. The goal is to capitalize on this researcher-farmer relationship. Agro-Insight will work with communities that have been able to improve their nutrition, livelihoods, productivity, and equity by using techniques developed with McKnight grantees. These videos produced with grantees will help other communities to achieve similar advances, and will document some of these scientific techniques, validated and improved by farmers. Each video will explain the scientific background behind the innovations (why they work) and a step-by-step demonstration of how they work.
Grant Aims:
Disseminate the results of research-and-development by McKnight Foundation grantees in Ecuador by producing and sharing three, high-quality farmer learning videos, in collaboration with selected McKnight Foundation grantees in Ecuador. Topics may include alternative food systems, managing seed potato degeneration, managing pests and disease of lupin, and food assistance and farmers.
Objectives:
- Select topics for videos in coordination with CCRP/Andes and grantees.
- Write 4 fact sheets and 4 draft video scripts at a write-shop facilitated by Agro-Insight.
- Produce the 3 videos and select 3 of the scripts for filming.
- Make the videos available to McKnight and grantees in various formats.
- Publish the videos in the public domain in several languages on www.accessagriculture.org
Outputs and Outcomes:
- By working on the scripts, fact sheets and videos, the grantees will be able to better articulate their achievements and research results. For example, through farmer interviews the grantees will see how community members have taken ownership of technical and social ideas and have benefited from them.
- By working on videos that highlight farmer innovation and community participation in social aspects of food systems, the grantees will gain an enhanced perception of farmer creativity.
- The videos will be a highly accessible (easy to watch) publication that will form part of the public record of McKnight-funded R&D on AEI. The videos will document the grantees’ research results for a larger audience.
- The videos and fact sheets will allow the grantees to share the results of their research more effectively with their target audiences in the Ecuadorian Andes.
- Elsewhere in the CCRP/Andes, in Peru and Bolivia, McKnight grantees will be able to use the Ecuadorian videos in their own outreach programs.
- The Ecuadorian videos will complement the 6 from Bolivia and 3 (underway) in Peru. This collection of 12 videos will give a positive account of McKnight-funded work in the Andes.
- The video versions in English and French will be useful for stakeholders outside of Latin America, e.g. for McKnight grantees in West and East Africa.Outcomes
- Enhanced knowledge of AEI in McKnight CoPs in the Andes and Africa.
- Audiovisual documentation and sharing of some of the McKnight Foundation’s achievements.
- Improved welfare of farmers in Ecuador, the Andes and elsewhere who watch the videos and will be inspired by the content to innovate.