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Sharing ideas between cultures with videos

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Publication date
24/06/2011
Number of Pages
6
Language:
English
Type of Publication:
Articles & Journals
Focus Region:
Asia and the Pacific
Sub-Saharan Africa
Focus Topic:
Agricultural Value Chains / Agri-Businesses
Information Technologies
Type of Risk:
Biological & environmental
Managerial & operational
Type of Risk Managment Option:
Risk reduction/mitigation
Commodity:
Crops
Author
Jeffery Bentley and Paul Van Mele
Organization
CABI

Civil servants, agricultural researchers, extension people and media experts often think that videos for farmers need to be filmed locally, so that the audience identifies with the actors. But this is not so. Farmers in southwestern and northern Nigeria reacted to videos on rice seed health (made in Bangladesh), on parboiling (filmed in Benin) and rice cultivation (from Mali). The farmers criticized the videos freely, but their remarks were about the technical pros and cons of the technologies presented in the videos. The farmers had no preference for watching videos featuring West African or Bangladeshi actors. The farmers only cared about the technical content of the film. This is an important, practical conclusion, because it is much easier and cheaper to dub a film into a second language than to film it over again.