See also the recent: Directions for
E-Extension at the Land Grants and
our India page
Agricultural Extension on the Web
John G. Schmitz
Introduction
DSpace and related projects are building web-based collections of 'open
content' in the public domain. While land grants routinely post 'open content'
for extension, the DSpace partners led by MIT have bet the farm. Should other
land grants join DSpace? What are the global uses of open extension content?
The web was first used to deliver
agricultural content to rural
The cost of computers and availability of
internet connections for rural farmers is the big problem. This is the Access
issue, but is not the only one. Extension services and other content providers
face high costs to develop and maintain web resources. Content might be kept
offline to protect print sales or it may be posted only at a fee. When content
is online and free, its posting is often uncoordinated with other providers,
making it harder to find and utilize. Full text content, databases and decision
tools remains relatively rare.The content side of the farmers digital divide
must be addressed as well as the access side. One can argue that this puts the
cart before the horse, but we have to prepare for the time when access is
there. Bolstering the content side might even speed solutions on the access
side.
Access is improving in places you least expect.
Cyber kiosks run by local entrepreneurs are appearing in some villages in
What can be done to speed needed changes and
reach farmers sooner? This paper tries to identify possible answers.
Recommendations for web-based extension are provided to help organizations
quicken their transition to web-based delivery in section one. Trends in
web-based extension are reviewed in the second section to guide longer-term
planning. Section three covers key
policy issues that impact web-based extension and offers positions on the
issues designed to help.
Section One - Recommendations
The following recommendations are based on nine years managing of a
small web development lab at the
1. Conduct Informal Strategic Planning
Follow these basic steps of group
problem-solving to develop your plan: Set goals, benchmark, brainstorm,
prioritize ideas, and develop an action plan. Include farmers, agribusiness and
Govt. officials in the process. Post and update your plan to guide development
and show progress. Acknowledge contributions to the site by staff and
stakeholders.
2. Prototype and Revise Sites
Favor rapid prototyping and formative evaluation
of Web sites rather than long, drawn-out stages of design and evaluation. Don't
be afraid to post preliminary content and Web page designs. Unlike the print
world, Web 'publishing' is a continuous process of creating and refining
documents and page designs. Be flexible and let the process evolve. Typically
short fact sheets and brochures go online first, then longer publications.
Eventually you can develop decision tools, databases and other interactive features.
3. Identify Content
Content is king: There is no substitute for
having quality content from internal and external sources ready-to-go.
Practical coverage of specific crops and growing areas is a must. Examples of
high demand content include: Climate and weather, variety testing, pest
management, soil treatments, current market prices, and government regulations
and programs. List internal content you have in-hand and prioritize it for
posting. List and evaluate available external content to which to link.
4. Create an Online Crop Bulletin
Bulletins of timely crop and pest information
during the growing season have proved popular with
5. Post Handbooks for Farmers
For example, the online Illinois Agronomy
Handbook offers full text chapters, interactive tools and databases.
Calculators for nitrogen rate, limestone, seed drop rate, replant decisions,
stand counting, and yield estimation allow users to plug in values and to save
results for later use. Large databases with climate and soil information
provide inputs to calculators. The Nutrient Management and Soil Plan
applications help farmers manage nutrients based on soil test results, soil
type, crop, anticipated yield and federal rules. The Agriweather Toolbench
estimates precipitation, temperatures, corn growth stages and pest emergence
for specific locations. Pages for each
6. Don't Re-invent the Wheel
While content availability can be a barrier to
Web-based extension, the process of basic Web design and programming is not.
Base your designs on sites you like. Study the HTML source code of existing
sites and public domain repositories. You can utilize and adapt the code for
your own site. Make your site searchable at no cost by adding Google, Excite or
other search engines.
7. Consider Outsourcing Initial Work
There is no lack of talented Web development
experts to maintain a Web server, design sites, post content and create
interactive features. Many charge reasonable fees and complete work promptly.
They do not need to be on-site; telecommuting does not work for some
professions but it works for Web production.
8. Start a Web Production Team
When you form your own team, hire individuals
with multiple skill sets that "can do it all." Or nearly so, programming and design skills
do not often mix in the same person. Keeping your core staff small saves
funding and helps avoids the bureaucracy created with larger production teams.
Add teen-age interns to your team, harnessing their energy and expertise.
Nurture a strong everyday relationship between your Web team and your content
specialists.
9. Plan for Convergence of Media and Reusability
of Content
Capture synergies by delivering the same content
over multiple media. This strategy is central to the much discussed convergence
of traditional media (Snail mail, radio, print, and TV) with new media (e-mail,
CD-ROMs and the Web). Insure that your production process routinely produces
content in multiple media. You should aim at a modular approach that lets you
re-use content in other programs. You can also transfer online content designed
for residential instruction to extension and vice-versa.
10. Adopt Standards of the World-Wide Web
Consortium ("W3")
W3.org oversees the Web. Following W3 standards
makes your Web site as accessible and functional as possible. For example, their meta-data standards help
insure that your content is highly searchable. A caveat is that page design for
display in Internet Explorer is a de facto 'standard' given their enormous
market share among Web users. Design for compatibility with Netscape is
important when feasible. Design for accessibility is important, sometimes even
the law. Enter your URL at bobby.org to receive a free report on the
accessibility of your site.
11. Make Web Server Policies
Adopt a strategy to manage staff log-ins and
passwords to the Web server. Decide which software is best for your staff to
create web documents. For example, FrontPage is easy to use but requires
special web server extensions and creates non-standard source code. Dreamweaver
is more powerful and follows W3 standards but novices often find it
difficult. Plan a URL scheme before your
URLs multiply and get out of hand. Insure their stability, consistency,
elegance and intuitiveness. Gradually set standards for Web design including
official logos, footers and acknowledgements. Consider use of free open source
software like Linux and Apache. Monitor server security issues such as hackers
and viruses and make sure your server software is routinely updated with
security 'patches.' Provide search capability to your web site by using the
free search capability offered by google.com and other search engines.
12. Market your site
Submit your site to major portals like Yahoo and
to portals specific to Agriculture. Add meta-name entries to your source code
to attract search engines. Since 'preferences' of search engines vary, review
the site http://www.searchenginewatch.com to understand how to tailor
meta-names for various search engines. Type keywords from your site into
different search engines to check your visibility.
13. Create both National and Regional Portals
Begin with a national portal but plan and create
local portals. The national portal aggregates content into a comprehensive
knowledge-base of extension information. For example, the Agricultural Gateway
to
14. Site Design Considerations
Ease of navigation, quick download and good searchability
of your site are key design goals. A comprehensive, regularly updated site
index is a must. Design for a lowest common denominator equipment but support
higher end users. Assign someone to maintain top level pages to keep the site
dynamic. Have a "What's New" section. Create multi-lingual versions
of your most valuable content.
15. Try Web Delivery of Traditional Programs
Traditional face-to-face programs can be
supplemented or replaced with Web-based versions. As supplements they can serve
as a primer and follow-up to normal face-to-face programs. As replacements,
they can deliver content by slides annotated with voice and by more
production-intensive streaming media. Consider use of "virtual
classroom" software that offers easy creation and delivery of online
programs with presentations, discussions and quizzes.
16. Require Extension Staff to Produce and Post
Content
Web production is becoming as common in the
everyday workflow as phone calls, word processing and PowerPoint. Content
specialists do not need to be Web specialists but they do need to be able to
routinely post content. Content saved as a print document can be easily saved
as HTML. Provide a standard design template that allows them to create, post
and maintain content without worrying about design. Content specialists can
even record multimedia presentations from their desktop. Multimedia created on
the desktop won't win awards for technical production but it might for
delivering timely content.
17. Require Extension Staff to Utilize Internet
Communications
Staff should routinely utilize e-mail, messaging
and even voice/video over IP. It complements your Web-based programs and
captures efficiencies. Communications will be speedier, electronic archives can
be maintained and ties to clients and stakeholders strengthened.
18. Train Extension Staff to use the Web
Deliver training on key software over the Web
whenever possible. Use existing online tutorials such as ones produced by the
Land Grant Training Alliance. Provide a
virtual help desk for staff (and site visitors) that receives and replies to
instant messages and e-mail requests for help on software issues. Always
archive the replies into lasting FAQs.
Section
Two - Trends
Almost ten years have passed since Agricultural
Extension began to use the web for public outreach. Enough time has passed to
know the most basic preferences of citizens such as ease of navigation, single
point of contact and localized information. We also have a strong idea of the
higher end capabilities that user's desire. Recent trends in web-based
extension reflect this knowledge and highlight emerging capabilities.
Data Visualization
The use of visualization technologies like
Global Information Systems (GIS) has begun on some extension Web sites.
Extensive databases of GIS data for a region are compiled from sources like
water, geology, and natural history surveys. Before these Extension services
combined such data and made it Web-accessible, it was not possible to view data
layers created by multiple units of a state government in one place. Plans are
being made to upgrade GIS systems now in use to support farmer's use of
precision agriculture technologies.
Simulation
Simple Web-based simulation tools are a reality
but it will take longer to create robust systems that allow farmers to run
complex simulations. Farmers would enter their own data into a simulation
engine in order to model crop growth over the growing season based on inputs
like climate, soil types, seed type, and soil treatments. Projections of the
bottom-line of alternative planting scenarios would also be calculated. Impact
on natural resource systems is being worked on too, allowing farmers to assess
impacts of soil treatments and other inputs on watersheds.
Ubiquitous Access
Farmers would be able to access your documents,
tools and databases anytime and anywhere. AIM Lab has prototyped this capability
in the delivery of climate information and agronomy calculators to cell phones
and PDA units like the Palm and PocketPC.
Digital Library Systems
On-line documents grew rapidly at many extension
web sites in the 1990's, but these were often posted haphazardly, without meta-data
and on different servers, or hidden from search engines in databases. Extension
services are now taking steps to create digital libraries of their content. It
is wise to consider needed document management strategies such as meta-data and
archiving early in your efforts. Distributed digital libraries are a key goal
for the coming decade, allowing farmers to transparently search for resources
across multiple extension sites, and effectively creating a world-wide library
of food, agricultural and natural resource information.
Integrated Farm Management Systems
Web-based decision aids for farmers have
multiplied in recent years and now they are being integrated into farm
management systems. Users gain the value of one-stop shopping for needed tools
and information. The tools can even be designed to pass values entered in one
tool into other system tools and to securely save data for future sessions.
Next generation systems will go much further. For example, knowledge management
capability will help farmers store and harness large amounts of information.
Visualization and simulation capability will be integrated into the systems,
easing their routine use. Data needed for visualization and simulation won't
have to be located; it will be automatically drawn from the knowledge-base.
Expert systems will help identify pest species and suggest strategies to manage
them. Other systems will help manage financial risk or optimize weather
predictions. Integrated farm management systems represent an advanced example
of cognitive augmentation (technologies that aid everyday thinking).
Spreadsheets 'augment' our minds by structuring and calculating the 'numbers'
for us, but the combination of a wide range of dedicated and integrated
decision aids tied to a powerful knowledge-base
is a major advance. Farming decisions involve large amounts of information from
different disciplines, constant uncertainty and high financial risk; systems
are coming soon to help.
Section
Three - Policy
The first decade of the Web provided many
lessons to the extension community. The above section provided a sub-set of
these lessons identified for practical application in beginning web efforts.
The first web decade also highlighted the need for new governmental and
institutional policies responsive to the new realities created by the Web and
designed to exploit its potential. Four needs for policy changes are identified
and discussed in this section.
Collaboration between Content-Providers
Extension services around the world will better
reach and help farmers if government, NGOs and Agribusiness collaborate to
contribute content. All too often however, extension staff seeking needed
content face recurring problems. Extension is part of Agency Y and needs
content from Agency X but X does not talk to Y because they compete for the
minister's attention and funds. Or Agency X will say that "We will post
the content that we think best on our own server and when we are ready, thank
you." Or boundaries between counties and states block coordination but are
agriculturally meaningless. Or agribusiness content like Agriwatch.com is not
included since government agencies historically do not work with business even
if the content is unique and reliable. Or a network administrator decrees that
an extension server cannot host web content from a NGO for fear of over-blown
security issues.
So a wealth of needed content exists in regions
around the world yet it is often inaccessible over the Web. When the
information is Web-accessible, it is scattered and unsearchable, with no
central portal to guide farmers.
One might imagine this problem is restricted to
only some countries but the
Turf battles, public-private issues, political
boundaries, network policies, bureaucracy and organizational inertia,
risk-adversity and other barriers impede the distribution of knowledge to
farmers. Arguably extension services are in the best position in the
It is curious that this goal has not enjoyed a
higher priority on the agenda when so many countries vigorously protect and
subsidize their farmers and depend on their success to feed their population,
bolster their GNP and increase international exports. Investment in web-based
delivery needs to be better 'sold' to politicians, government administrators
and funding agencies. Anticipated efficiencies and long-term savings in
delivery can be promised but a new argument needs to be made too. The
systematic distribution of knowledge to farmers over the Web is an essential
component of national agricultural policy. It can be replied that agricultural
education and extension already are heavily funded priorities. What's new is
the opportunity to strongly focus on Web delivery, coordinating all available
content to do so. Supporting small farmers and bolstering the agricultural
economy are key justifications to do so but the imperative to feed growing
populations and promote sustainable farming round out the position. In his book
on land grant universities,
Open Content
Open content is a recent term that comes from
the older term 'open source.' Advocates
of open source create software that is free for public use while open content
proponents build repositories of free content. While open content is a new
term, the practice goes back to the early days of the Internet when efforts
like Project Gutenberg began posting e-books on-line. MIT is the leading example
of an academic institution that is committed to open content. Their
OpenCourseWare project posts MIT course content in the public domain and aims
at posting all their courses by 2005. MIT also leads the DSpace consortium that
combine open content from member institutions. The term "institutional
repositories" refers to these growing collections of open content within
and across universities.
The problem of this section is the absence of an
open content respository for farmers. For example, there still is no central
index for browsing content from the land grants or a search function to
discover it. USDA posted a provided a clickable national map several years ago
that looked like a promising start, but even now it only links to the top level
pages of state land grants. A project called AgNIC goes further. Funded by USDA
and overseen by the National Agricultural Library, it is developing key
standards for a national digital library of agriculture. The project
remains in an early stage however and the holdings fall far short of realizing
such a library. We also have not yet seen the emergence of researcher
communities in agriculture that build repositories of open content, as the
physics community did.
The shortcomings of online collections at
individual land grants are not the fault of individual staff. It is not part of
their duties. There are broader reasons. Cultural and institutional shifts take
time. New initiatives and technologies are viewed with caution until they
stabilize. New tools and training programs have to be planned and
purchased. There is no requirement or strong incentive for individual
land grants to contribute and maintain documents in the collection. Declining
funding for extension shifts more salaries to soft money sources. Staff have to
spend more time on work-for-hire effectively, and less on the core mission.
Documents sales have to be used to help fund salaries too. New initiatives of
any kind are less likely and especially those that have significant start-up
costs and no revenue model. MIT tells us that their project offers content
" for the good of mankind. There is no revenue model." But revenue
models are more and more important at land grants today.
One can speculate that publicly funded colleges
will follow MIT in the long run anyway. The land grants face an even greater
impetus to do so since it is part of their mission to disseminate
knowledge. Federal funding in the future could very well include mandates that
publically funded content be posted and deposited into a national repository.
Can the process be speeded up?
A rudimentary digital library for agriculture
has been possible for ten years and is a much easier task today. Any document
now posted on the Web by land grants could be made searchable and
browsable very quickly. For example, a new software package called VIAS
offers capability that could be described as
"digital-library-in-a-box." This NCSA-created package
automatically locates and indexes a set of URLs entered, creating a distributed
library of resources on-the-fly. It is important to appreciate the potential of
this class of technologies. One might picture the need for large mainframes to
realize a digital library, a central brain that remote terminals access to
retrieve desired resources. But in fact little centralized equipment and
software is necessary. The key prerequisite is the Web. Each resource on the
web has a unique address and we access it by entering the URL, or searching for
it via keywords, or scanning portals like Yahoo, or by following trails of
links. The fact that we use these
methods shows that a library of world resources is already there, if only in a
weak sense.
A striking example of this technology is
provided by the P2P (Peer-To-Peer) music sharing technologies used around the
world. Users connect to each other's computers (their peers) instead of a
central server to exchange music files. Millions of users search and exchange
millions of music files every day with the systems. The meta-data that is
attached to each song is the electronic equivalent of a card in the library
catalogue that provides title, creator, and keywords. It is a hallmark of any digital library to
have such a card for each resource and it explains why teenagers using P2P
networks have no problem finding the music they want every night. Any search
engine relies on meta-data to find a resource. This method is not different in
principle from a manual search of drawers of paper library cards; the
difference is that computers search the catalog much faster. On P2P networks,
another difference is that resources stored around the world that can be
immediately identified and downloaded. It turns out then that the P2P networks
now widely in use exemplify the global transparency that digital library designers
strive for; you can find resources wherever they are located.
The systems are interesting because they offer a
quick way to build digital libraries for Agriculture. The P2P example suggests
that the web servers of land grants and government agencies (and hopefully
non-profit groups and agribusiness too) could be harnessed as easily as the
teenagers' computers in their bedrooms were utilized to share music. The high
quality content that is created everyday by the land grants could be made transparent
to citizens, as if it were all stored on the same central server. It would constitute a land grant information
system offering content that spans farming, natural resources, food and
nutrition, companion animals, family and child development, and consumer
economics.
The first example of a digital agriculture
library was demonstrated soon after the release of NCSA Mosaic (Mayer-Kress,
1994). Mayer-Kress had a Next Machine in his lab that offered unique
capabilities for exploiting the nascent web. Using the objected oriented
technology Next provided, he could create clickable concept maps on-the-fly
that drew together online world resources on food and agriculture. His
colleagues around the world accessed the resources during live tele-conferences
exploring solutions to global hunger. The success of P2P as a global system
reminds us of the lesson first demonstrated by the Internet and the web. There
is no technical reason to stop at national boundaries. A music file from be
downloaded from
Infrastructure for Web Delivery to Rural Areas
Many agencies and funding entities have been
slow to adopt the Web and have continued costly projects that could be better
spent on Web delivery. In particular, satellite-delivered video is expensive to
produce and deliver and can only reach brick and mortar endpoints. Creative,
coordinated funding is needed to explore and jump-start web technologies to connect
the rural world. Sustainable models are out there such as M. S. Swaminathan's
Coordination between Funding Agencies
Agencies that fund agricultural extension and
related missions must better coordinate short-term efforts. The World Bank,
FAO, UNESCO, USAID and private foundations like Ford and Rockefeller do great
things to aid rural development but too often independently. Redundant programs
are created, efficiencies are not exploited and potential synergies are lost.
Examples of successful coordination are there, but many times reported
collaborations do not appear substantial.
Competition is a key reason that coordination is
rare, whether it is government agencies, world development organizations,
foundations, or NGO's. Needed and obvious chances to coordinate are blocked by
competition. Agencies and foundations want to tell their board of directors,
membership and the public that they were the first or the best. Competition
makes the world go around, but in areas where starvation is rampant, the needs
of small farmers outweigh the benefits of competition. One element in bringing
together entities is to boost awareness of relevant programs that are planned
or already in place. For example, the World Resource Institute's Digital Dividend
project is cataloguing development projects in India that utilize ICT's to help
agencies and foundations find common ground.
Conclusion
Meetings held in 1871 brought together
representatives of the newly formed "Agricultural Colleges founded on the
national grant of lands." Mr. McAffee, head of the Agricultural Farm at
the
McAffee's question concerns how to best do
outreach. Faculty could give public lectures on campus or by traveling to
different areas of a state. Options evolved to include horse-drawn traveling
museums, radio, film, TV and other extension technologies. The options changed
dramatically in the early 1970's by the military-created Internet. E-mail
became possible and early information systems like Gopher. The World Wide Web
followed in 1991, the usage of which scaled up exponentially with the release
of the first graphical web browser, NCSA Mosaic.
How quickly will the web delivery of
agricultural extension scale up in the next ten years? Will a gradual or
accelerated scenario occur? The first decade of Web-based extension provided
examples of projects and strategies that took the fast-track and offered policy
lessons that can speed future efforts. Agricultural Extension services around
the world have a historic opportunity to help farmers alleviate hunger, protect
the land and run profitable operations, in the short-term.
-------------------------
References
Bush,
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Campbell, J.(1995). Reclaiming
a Lost Heritage.
Hatch,
R. (1967). An early view of the land grant colleges.
Hoeft,
R., & Nafziger, E. (2001).
Mayer-Kress, G. (1994). A tele-conferencing experiment with
WWW/Mosaic (Report 94-25).
Reeves,
Timothy (2001). Science and
sustainable food security global public goods for poor farmers - myth or
reality? Talk at the
Sivakumar,
S. (2000). "E-chaupal: An integrated concept as a model solution". SAARC
Oils and Fats Today.
Wells, H. G. (1937). The world brain.
-----------------------------------
Contact
AIM Lab, College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental
Sciences
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Address - 528 Bevier Hall, MC-184, 905 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana,
IL 61801 USA
Phone - 217 244 2291 office, 217 622 3366 cell, 217 398 9664 home
Messenging - AOL
E-Mail - jschmitz@uiuc.edu, jgfschmitz@ameritech.com (personal)
Web - http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/aim/john/jgs.htm
Document URL
http://web.aces.uiuc.edu/aim/john/CISCE2002.html