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5.7 Specific Channels Employed to Package and Disseminate Information on
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information would not only create an enabling learning environment, but would also attract farmers to learn by doing. These findings confirm those by Rogers (2003:204-205), who explains that communication channels have a significant role in creating knowledge and changing peoples’ attitude towards an innovation. The only language medium used by experts delivering scientific information to farmers was through Kiswahili which is a native national language.
The in-depth interviews with the two district agricultural officers from the two study villages (refer to question b11 in Appendix 3) revealed that the regions and district councils receive scientific information pertaining to agriculture and climate change and variability from both the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Environment, on issues addressed to farmers each season. The study also found that early warning information provided by the Tanzania Meteorological Agency (TMA) is being channelled to the regional and district councils, where it is being repackaged and disseminated to farmers in villages. However, it was observed that in most SADC countries there is a weak link between meteorological experts and the extension services or other agricultural expert intermediaries in the Southern African Development Community-Regional Remote Sensing Unit (SADC-RRSU) (2002). These findings pose a major communication challenge to extension officers in translating and interpreting the probabilistic forecasts into easily understandable farmers’ language (Sivakumar and Hansen 2007:9).
The agricultural officers were asked how information on climate change and variability is packaged and disseminated to farmers (see questions b11 in Appendix 3). The findings showed that information at the district level is disseminated by village executive leaders through meetings. These findings are explained by the Diffusion of Innovations model, which explains that opinion leaders are mostly used by change agents to inform others on innovations and to influence adoption (Rogers 2003:27). Findings from the interview with the Chibelela village district extension/agricultural officer indicated that regular early warning information from the TMA is sent to village executive leaders.
Despite results indicating that farmers rely on village leaders to disseminate information from extension officers, it was found that sometimes the information they disseminate did not reach farmers on time and did not contain content desired. These findings are supported by Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations model, by explaining that opinion leaders can speed up or
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slow down the diffusion of innovation process if they are being overused by extension officers such as extension officers and hence deviate from the systems norms of the community (Rogers 2003:27). Findings further showed that if the information happened to reach farmers on time, it was through informal rather than formal means. These results confirm those by Rogers in his model of Diffusions of Innovations, which explains that “most human communication occurs between individuals who are homophilous” (Rogers 2003:37), which means that informal communication channels are effective in disseminating information to a targeted group with similar cultural values.
Farmers perceive village meetings to be more reliable in acquiring new knowledge, as they are mostly used to create awareness about what crops to cultivate in a season and not to educate farmers on new farming methods. These results are supported by those of Rogers (2003:205), who observed that interpersonal communication channels are more effective than other channels in reducing uncertainty and changing users’ attitudes about an innovation. The focus group discussions (FGD) findings with farmers indicated that, despite extension officers’ custodial role in packaging and disseminating information to farmers, most farmers stated they took more time to learn innovations themselves rather than learning from the extension and agricultural experts.
Rogers (2003:174) shows that the success or failure of the adoption of an innovation depends on the individual’s attitude to an innovation. The FGDs showed that weather and seasonal information on climate change and variability disseminated to farmers was broad and failed to cut across the villages’ information on climate change and variability needs. The major challenge emerging for the farmers was the accuracy and content of weather information from the TMA. Thus inaccurate information on weather information will deter users from adopting that innovation, as it is seems to have no relative advantage (Rogers 2003). The information from TMA was specific with regard to agricultural zones and not for a region or village. The uncertainty and unpredictability of weather is envisaged as a major barrier in the dissemination process. To overcome the problem, senders of information need to consider ways of enhancing receivers’ understanding of the uncertainty and unpredictability of forecasts instead of blaming them for not understanding.
A need to repackage scientific information for farmers was highlighted by the CCAA programme manager, who observed that there is a communication barrier between
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researchers and farmers in Tanzania (cf. question 35 in Appendix 4). The programme manager stated that “most researchers in Tanzania are not trained to communicate their findings with farmers”. While the first priority of most researchers is to introduce their findings to their peers, awareness of the need to disseminate the innovation to the grass roots once it has been recognised and validated by peers, needs to be enhanced. These findings confirm those by Rogers (2003:366-370) in his Diffusion of Innovations (DOI) model, which explains the importance of information repackaging by change agents (knowledgeable information disseminators). Supporting the importance of the repackaging of information on climate change and variability to users, Sivakumar and Hansen (2007:9) explain that effective use of information on climate change and variability, to a large extent, depends on information disseminators understanding potential users, their behaviour and how information flows between actors. The DOI describes the adoption of an innovation to be dependent on effective communication processes (Rogers 2003).
The programme manager further explained that the “majority of researchers don’t share and transfer what they know to farmers”. Study findings from the semi-structured interviews supported the observed trend of researchers’ failure to communicate their findings. One interviewee, DM, stated that “Most of the time we see researchers coming here and do research but they never return here to where the research was done to share and update us on their findings”. Farmers in the focus group discussions and the interviews pleaded with researchers to return and share their observations and scientific discoveries so as to communicate the knowledge to farmers. These findings agree with those by Kadi, Njau, Mwikya and Kamga (2011), who observed that half of the farmers in East African countries have not been exposed to research and extension services.