Helping to write a script for a farmer training video on vermiwash triggered my interest in trying it out myself, as I began to wonder if ideas from tropical India could work in temperate Belgium.
As the video explains, vermiwash is the liquid that is collected after water passes through compost made by earthworms. It is rich in plant growth hormones, micro-nutrients like iron and zinc, and major nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. Vermiwash increases the number of beneficial micro-organisms in the soil and helps plants to grow healthy.
After showing the problem of declining soil health due to the overuse of agrochemicals, the video quickly moves on to some powerful, motivational interviews by some local farmers in Tamil Nadu, in southern India.
“When you want to mix vermicompost with the soil, you need large quantities. But vermiwash can be applied directly to plant leaves, so you need less and you can see the effect on plant growth faster. It is also cheaper than compost,†says farmer Sivamoorthi.
Besides the liquid vermiwash, I had also helped another of our Indian partners, WOTR, develop a video on vermicompost, which is solid, and stronger than normal compost . But, I was more attracted to the idea of making vermiwash, as it requires little space and I could easily use it as a foliar spray on my vegetables, berry shrubs and fruit trees.
At the local hardware store, I bought a barrel with a tap at the bottom. The first drafts of the script mentioned that it is best to fill the bottom of the barrel with small stones, so the tap doesn’t get blocked. I did exactly that. In the final version of the video, this part was removed. When I asked Shanmuga Priya, who made this video, she said: “After I talked to farmers it seems no one is doing this, because after three months they empty the barrel, remove the earthworms and then put the compost on their field. Of course, they don’t want stones to be mixed with the compost.â€
Indian farmers just use a small piece of mosquito netting or cotton cloth as a filter. Right, that was a good lesson; farmers always find a way to improve any technique they learn from extension staff. I still have the bottom of my barrel filled with pebbles, and so far so good. I will have to make the extra effort of sorting out the stones when setting up a new batch of vermiwash.
The video says to fill the bottom with some 10-15 centimetres of dried leaves, not green ones, which would slow down decomposition. As I had plenty of dried oak leaves, and even though they decompose slowly, I wondered if they would work, but hey, that’s what I have, so that’s what I will try.
Then the video shows how an equal amount of rice straw is added. Instead, I used wheat straw, as I still have plenty of bundles in the attic of our shed.
The next part was also a little tricky. While the video suggested using 5 to 10 kg of decomposed cow dung, I wondered if the dung of my sheep would work just as well. It was a discussion I had had several times with Indian partners, who always say that only cow dung is a useful source of beneficial microorganisms. I asked a friend of mine, who is soil scientist, and still did not get a clear answer to this. Soil scientists are trained more in the physical and chemical properties of soil and are less familiar with its complex biology. But that is food for another blog story.
After adding some water to the barrel, I collected a few handfuls of earthworms from my compost and put them into the barrel. I would soon see if my set up would work or not. While farmers in India can collect vermiwash after just 10 days, I realised that the early days of spring in Belgium are still too cold, so the worms are not that active yet. Six weeks later, though, we happily collected our first litre of brown vermiwash.
After diluting it with ten litres of water, I sprayed the vermiwash on the leaves of my rhubarb as an experiment, before putting it on any other plants. In just a few days the leaves turned a shiny, dark green. The plants looked so healthy, that neighbours even remarked on it and asked what I had given them.
My wife, Marcella, had been rearing vegetable seedlings in a small glass house, and when the time came to transplant them to the garden, she decided to set up a small experiment. One batch of mustard leaf seedlings would be planted straight in the soil, the other batch she would soak the roots of the seedlings for 15 minutes in pure vermiwash. After all, the video shows that this works with rice seedlings, so why not with vegetable seedlings?
And again, the effect was striking: all of the seedlings dipped in the vermiwash took root quickly, while in the other batch only a fraction did.
As Jeff has written in some earlier blogs, the Covid-19 crisis has stopped people from travelling, affecting many farmers (see: Travelling farmers), students (see: A long walk home) and society at large. It has also forced people to creatively use their time. Like many other people, we have been able to spend more time in the garden, and in our case, we were able try out some of the things we learned from farmers in the global South.
As we tried oak leaves, wheat straw and sheep dung instead of the ingredients used by Indian farmers, we found that vermiwash works as well in Flanders as it does in Tamil Nadu. Good training videos inspire people to experiment with new ideas and adapt these to their own conditions. That is the philosophy and approach of Access Agriculture: using video as a global source of inspiration.
Related blogs
Earthworms from India to Bolivia
Encouraging microorganisms that improve the soil
Related videos, freely downloadable from www.accessagriculture.org
Vea la versión en español a continuación
A few weeks ago, I met a young Bolivian journalist, Edson RodrÃguez, who works on an environmental program at the university (UMSS) television channel in Cochabamba called TVU. He helps to produce a show called Granizo Blanco (white hail), a dramatic name in this part of the Andes, where hail can devastate crops in a moment. The show covers all environmental issues, not just agriculture. For example, the program recently featured mud slides that have destroyed homes, and the impacts of a new metro train system in the valley.
I first met Edson in the field, where he was filming the tree seedling distribution that I wrote about earlier in this blog. Later, I told him about the agroecological videos on Access Agriculture.
Edson wondered if some of the videos on Access Agriculture might be suitable for the TV show. After watching some of the videos, he downloaded one on making compost with earthworms. The video was filmed in India, and it had recently been translated into Spanish, crucial for making videos more widely available. Without a Spanish version it wouldn’t be possible to consider showing a video from Maharashtra in Cochabamba. The two places are physically far apart, but they have much in common, such as a semi-arid climate, and small farms that produce crop residues and other organic waste that can be turned into compost.
Edson asked me to take part in an episode of Granizo Blanco that included a short interview followed by a screening of the compost and earthworm video. He was curious to know why Access Agriculture promotes videos of farmers in one country to show to smallholders elsewhere. I said that the farmers may differ in their skin color, clothing and hair styles, but they are working on similar problems. For example, farmers worldwide are struggling with crops contaminated with aflatoxins, poisons produced by fungi on improperly dried products like peanuts and maize.
I told Edson that farmer learning videos filmed in Bolivia are being used elsewhere. My colleagues and I made a video on managing aflatoxins in groundnuts, originally in Spanish, but since been translated into English, French and various African languages. The same aflatoxin occurs in Bolivia and in Burkina Faso, so African farmers can benefit from experience in South America. In this case the video shows simple ways to reduce aflatoxins in food, using improved drying and storage techniques developed by Bolivian scientists and farmers in Chuquisaca.
“What other kinds of things can Bolivian farmers learn from their peers in other countries?†Edson asked me, as he realized that good ideas can flow in both directions. I explained that soil fertility is a problem in parts of Bolivia and elsewhere; Access Agriculture has videos on cover crops, compost, conservation agriculture and may other ways to improve the soil, all freely available for programs such as Granizo Blanco to screen.
Many older people, especially those who work for governments, feel that videos have to be made in each country, and cannot be shared across borders. This closed vision makes little sense. The same civil servants happily organize and attend international conferences on agriculture and many other topics to share their own ideas across borders. If government functionaries can gain insights from foreign peers, farmers should be able to do so as well.
Fortunately, younger people like Edson are able to see the importance of media, such as learning videos that enable farmers to share knowledge and experience cross-culturally. Smallholders can swap ideas and stimulate innovations as long as the sound track is translated into a language they understand. It costs much less to translate a video than to make one.
Related blog
The right way to distribute trees
Related videos
Making a vemicompost bed (The earthworm video from India)
Managing aflatoxins in groundnuts during drying and storage
See also the links to soil conservation videos at the end of last week’s story: A revolution for our soil
Acknowledgment
The McKnight Foundation has generously funded many video translations, including the earthworm video, besides the filming of the aflatoxin video and its translation into several languages. For many years, SDC has offered crucial support that enabled Access Agriculture to become a global leader in South-South exchange through quality farmer-to-farmer training videos.
LOMBRICES DE TIERRA DE LA INDIA A BOLIVIA
Por Jeff Bentley 29 de marzo del 2020
Hace unas semanas conocà a un joven periodista boliviano, Edson RodrÃguez, que trabaja en un programa de medio ambiente en el canal de televisión, TVU, de la Universidad (UMSS) en Cochabamba. Él ayuda a producir un programa llamado Granizo Blanco, un nombre dramático en esta parte de los Andes, donde el granizo puede arrasar los cultivos en un momento. El programa cubre todos los temas ambientales, no sólo la agricultura. Por ejemplo, el programa recientemente presentó los deslizamientos de mazamorra que han destruido varias casas, y los impactos de un nuevo sistema de tren metropolitano en el valle.
Conocà a Edson por primera vez en el campo, donde él estaba filmando la distribución de plantines de árboles, el tema de un blog previo. Más tarde, le hablé de los videos agroecológicos en Access Agriculture.
Edson se preguntaba si algunos de los videos de Access Agriculture podrÃan servir para el programa de televisión. Después de ver algunos de los videos, descargó uno sobre cómo hacer abono con lombrices de tierra. El vÃdeo se filmó en la India y recientemente se habÃa traducido al español, lo que era imprescindible para hacer los vÃdeos más disponibles. Sin una versión en español serÃa imposible mostrar un video de Maharashtra en Cochabamba. Los dos lugares están fÃsicamente alejados, pero tienen mucho en común, como un clima semiárido y pequeñas granjas que producen residuos de cultivos y otros desechos orgánicos que pueden convertirse en abono.
Edson me pidió que participara en un episodio de Granizo Blanco que incluÃa una breve entrevista seguida de una proyección del vÃdeo de lombricultura. Él querÃa saber por qué Access Agriculture promueve videos de los agricultores de un paÃs para mostrarlos a los campesinos de otros paÃses. Dije que los agricultores pueden diferir en el color de su piel, su ropa y peinado, pero están trabajando en problemas similares. Por ejemplo, hay agricultores de todo el mundo que luchan con la contaminación de aflatoxinas, venenos producidos por hongos en productos mal secados como el manà y el maÃz.
Expliqué que los videos filmados con agricultores en Bolivia se están usando en otros paÃses. Mis colegas y yo hicimos un video sobre el manejo de las aflatoxinas en el manÃ, originalmente en español, pero luego se ha traducido al inglés, al francés y a varios idiomas africanos. La misma aflatoxina se produce en Bolivia y en Burkina Faso, por lo que los agricultores africanos pueden beneficiarse de la experiencia en América del Sur. En este caso, el vÃdeo muestra formas sencillas de reducir las aflatoxinas en los alimentos secos, desarrolladas por cientÃficos y agricultores bolivianos en Chuquisaca.
“¿Qué otro tipo de cosas pueden aprender los agricultores bolivianos de sus homólogos de otros paÃses?” Edson me preguntó, al darse cuenta de que las buenas ideas pueden fluir en ambas direcciones. Le expliqué que la fertilidad del suelo es un problema en algunas partes de Bolivia y que afecta a muchos otros agricultores en otros lugares; Access Agriculture tiene videos sobre cultivos de cobertura, compost, agricultura de conservación y muchas otras técnicas para mejorar el suelo, todos disponibles gratuitamente para que programas como Granizo Blanco los proyecten.
Muchas personas mayores, especialmente las que trabajan para los gobiernos, consideran que los videos tienen que hacerse en cada paÃs y no pueden compartirse a través de las fronteras. Esta visión cerrada tiene poco sentido. Los mismos funcionarios públicos organizan y asisten con gusto a conferencias internacionales sobre agricultura y diversos temas para compartir sus propias ideas a través de las fronteras. Si los funcionarios del gobierno pueden obtener ideas de sus colegas extranjeros, los agricultores también deberÃan poder hacerlo.
Afortunadamente, los jóvenes como Edson ven la importancia de los medios de comunicación, como los vÃdeos, que permiten a los agricultores compartir conocimientos y experiencias entre culturas. Los pequeños agricultores pueden intercambiar ideas y estimular innovaciones siempre que la banda sonora se traduzca a un idioma que entiendan. Cuesta mucho menos traducir un video que hacer uno.
Historias relacionadas del blog
La manera correcta de distribuir los árboles
Videos relacionados
Hacer una lombricompostera (el video de la lombriz de tierra de la India)
Manejo de aflatoxinas en manà (también disponible en quechua y en aymara)
Vea también los enlaces a los videos de conservación del suelo al final de la historia de la semana pasada: Una revolución para nuestro suelo
Agradecimiento
La Fundación McKnight ha financiado generosamente muchas traducciones de video, incluyendo el video de la lombriz, además de la filmación del video de la aflatoxina y su traducción a varios idiomas. Durante muchos años, la Cosude ha ofrecido un apoyo crucial que ha permitido a Access Agriculture convertirse en un lÃder mundial en el intercambio Sur-a-Sur a través de vÃdeos agricultor a agricultor.
Farmers need new ideas, and researchers need data. When these two professional groups meet in the framework of collaborative or participatory research, it is often not clear who has to evolve in what direction: do farmers need to learn about research protocols, systematically collecting and analysing data, or do researchers need new ideas from farmers to guide their research agenda?
When grantees of the McKnight Foundation from West Africa recently met in Montpellier, France, at a Community of Practice (COP) meeting to share experiences, it was refreshing to see how this network has over time taken ownership of some key values on doing research with farmers on agroecology, as a way to move towards a more just and equitable food system with care for the people and the planet.
Out of the more than 60 people from farmer organisations, NGOs, research institutes and universities from Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, I was glad to run into some old friends. Ali Maman Aminou is a farmer and director of the federation of farmer unions in Maradi (FUMA Gaskiya), one of the main farmer organisations in Niger.
In 2011, Aminou was one of the twelve people we trained during a 2-week intensive workshop on making quality farmer-to-farmer training videos. Ever since, Aminou has been using video in his interactions with the growing number of members, now some 18,000. The series of 10 videos on integrated striga and soil fertility management that were developed with ICRISAT and its partners were all translated into Hausa, which made it an ideal tool to trigger lively discussions with farming communities. Striga is a parasitic weed that attaches its roots to the roots of cereal crops, as such depriving the crop from the water and nutrients it needs.
“During one of the evenings that we showed the videos,†Aminou says, “one of the farmers spoke out and told he liked the videos, but that they had another technology to fight striga that was also efficient.†Aminou listened intently as the man went on to explain that farmers mix their millet seed with the powdery substance found around the seeds of the néré, a common tree across West Africa. When farmers sow millet, the néré powder apparently inhibits the striga seeds in the soil from germinating.
“This is amazing,†I told Aminou. “It would be great if you could turn this into a training video.†At that stage, it became apparent how much farmers and researchers had already begun to interact as equal players. Aminou swiftly turned to Salifou Nouhou Jangorzo, a lecturer from the University of Maradi in Niger, who had joined our discussion and said: “We need to find out more about this practice. We need all the details of how farmers do this.†Professor Salifou looked surprised at first; he had never heard of this practice before, but after 5 minutes of discussing with Aminou he was convinced. It turns out that he is planning a survey on a labour-saving weeding technology and so he decided on the spot that he would add some questions about managing striga with néré to his survey.
Farmer-to-farmer training videos, like the ones in the striga series, trigger farmers to experiment with new ideas. They also give farmers confidence to openly share their real-life experiences, knowledge and practices. Through a functional network these ideas can find their way back to researchers. In a progressive and collaborative research network, communication is not an end-product in itself, as Aminou has shown, but it feeds into a life of learning to make agriculture more resilient, profitable and responsive to farmers’ needs.
Finding a common ground between researchers and farmers does not happen overnight, it needs a concerted and long-term effort.
Note
The scientific name of the néré tree is Parkia biglobosa, also known as the African locust bean.
Acknowledgement
We greatly appreciate the endeavours and commitment of the Collaborative Crop Research Programme (CCRP) supported by the McKnight Foundation.
Farmer training videos
The videos on striga and on more than 200 other topics are freely downloadable from the Access Agriculture video platform www.accessagriculture.org
Related blogs
Social innovations triggered by videos: Evidence from Mali
Fighting striga and improving soil fertility with videos in Mali
Version française
Un terrain d’entente
Les agriculteurs ont besoin de nouvelles idées et les chercheurs ont besoin de données. Lorsque ces deux groupes professionnels se rencontrent dans le cadre d’une recherche collaborative ou participative, il est souvent difficile de savoir qui doit évoluer dans quelle direction : les agriculteurs ont-ils besoin de connaître les protocoles de recherche, de collecter et d’analyser systématiquement les données, ou les chercheurs ont-ils besoin de nouvelles idées de la part des agriculteurs pour orienter leur programme de recherche ?
Lorsque les projets financés par la Fondation McKnight en Afrique de l’Ouest se sont récemment rencontrés à Montpellier, en France, lors de la réunion de comité de pratique (CoP) pour un échange d’expériences, il était intéressant de voir comment ce réseau s’est approprié, au fil du temps, certaines valeurs clés sur la recherche avec les agriculteurs en matière d’agroécologie comme moyen d’évoluer vers un système alimentaire plus juste et plus équitable, soucieux des populations et de la planète.
Sur plus de 60 personnes issues d’organisations de producteurs, d’ONG, d’instituts de recherche et d’universités du Mali, du Burkina Faso et du Niger, j’ai été heureux de rencontrer de vieux amis. Ali Maman Aminou est agriculteur et directeur de la fédération des unions de producteurs de Maradi (FUMA Gaskiya), l’une des principales organisations paysannes du Niger.
En 2011, Aminou était parmi les douze personnes que nous avons formées lors d’un atelier intensif de deux semaines sur la réalisation de vidéos de formation de qualité paysan à paysan. Depuis, Aminou utilise les vidéos dans ses interactions avec le nombre croissant de membres de l’organisation, qui s’élève aujourd’hui à environ 18 000 personnes. La série de 10 vidéos sur la gestion intégrée du striga et de la fertilité des sols, développée avec l’ICRISAT et ses partenaires, a été traduite en Haoussa, ce qui rend l’outil idéal pour susciter de vives discussions avec les communautés agricoles. Le striga est une mauvaise herbe parasite qui attache ses racines aux racines des cultures céréalières, privant ainsi la culture de l’eau et des nutriments dont elle a besoin.
“Lors d’une soirée où nous avons montré les vidéos”, raconte Aminou, “un des agriculteurs a pris la parole et a dit qu’il aimait les vidéos, mais qu’ils avaient une autre technologie pour lutter contre le striga qui était aussi efficace”. Aminou a écouté attentivement comment les agriculteurs mélangent leurs graines de millet avec la substance poudreuse qui se trouve autour des graines du néré, un arbre commun dans toute l’Afrique de l’Ouest. Lorsque les agriculteurs sèment du millet, la poudre de néré empêche apparemment la germination des graines de striga dans le sol.
“C’est incroyable”, ai-je dit à Aminou. “Ce serait génial si vous pouviez en faire une vidéo de formation.” À ce stade, il est apparu clairement que les agriculteurs et les chercheurs avaient déjà commencé à interagir en tant qu’acteurs égaux. Aminou s’était rapidement tourné vers Salifou Nouhou Jangorzo, un professeur de l’Université de Maradi au Niger, qui s’était joint à notre discussion et a déclaré “Nous devons en savoir plus sur cette pratique. Nous avons besoin de tous les détails sur la façon dont les agriculteurs font cela “. Le professeur Salifou a d’abord eu l’air surpris ; il n’avait jamais entendu parler de cette pratique auparavant, mais après 5 minutes de discussion avec Aminou, il était convaincu. Il s’avère qu’il prévoit d’effectuer une enquête sur une technologie de désherbage permettant d’économiser la main-d’Å“uvre et il a donc décidé sur-le-champ d’ajouter à son enquête quelques questions sur la gestion de la striga avec la poudre de néré.
Les vidéos de formation paysan à paysan, comme celles de la série sur le striga, incitent les agriculteurs à expérimenter de nouvelles idées. Elles donnent également aux agriculteurs la confiance nécessaire pour partager ouvertement leurs expériences, leurs connaissances et leurs pratiques réelles de la vie. Grâce à un réseau fonctionnel, ces idées peuvent être transmises aux chercheurs. Dans un réseau de recherche progressive et collaborative, la communication n’est pas un produit final en soi, comme l’a montré Aminou, mais elle alimente une vie d’apprentissage pour rendre l’agriculture plus résistante, plus rentable et plus sensible aux besoins des agriculteurs.
Trouver un terrain d’entente entre chercheurs et agriculteurs ne se fait pas du jour au lendemain, il faut un effort concerté et à long terme.
Note :
Le nom scientifique du néré est Parkia biglobosa, également connu sous le nom de caroubier Africain.
Remerciements
Nous apprécions grandement les efforts et l’engagement du Programme de recherche collaborative sur les cultures (CCRP) soutenu par la Fondation McKnight.
Vidéos de formation des agriculteurs
Les vidéos sur le striga et sur plus de 200 autres sujets sont téléchargeables gratuitement sur la plateforme vidéo Access Agriculture www.accessagriculture.org/fr
I wrote in last week’s blog, Her mother’s laugh, that famed plant breeder (and showman), Luther Burbank, bred the spineless cactus. But there is more to the story.
The prickly pear cactus is native to Mexico and spread to the Caribbean and possibly to the Andes in pre-Colombian times. Columbus took the plant, with its delicious fruit, back to Europe on his first voyage. The hardy cactus was soon grown around the Mediterranean, and quickly found its way to arid lands from South Africa to India.
While ancient Mexicans domesticated this cactus, farmers in India selected varieties without thorns.
By 1907, Luther Burbank was promoting his spineless cactus, a hybrid of Mexican and Indian varieties. In his catalogues he wrote that the cactus which would grow with no irrigation, little care, and it would make ideal cattle fodder for the arid western USA.
In the USA, Burbank’s spineless cactus never quite lived up to its hype. While it lacked the large, needle-like thorns, it still grew small, hair-like thorns, which are brittle and can be painful when they lodge into a person’s hands or an animal’s mouth. Burbank’s spineless cactus required some irrigation and more management than other varieties, and under stress, the cactus tended to grow its spines. The thorn-free cactus also had to be fenced to protect it from hungry livestock and wildlife.
Burbank’s American cactus bubble burst by the 1920s, when ranchers grew disappointed with prickly pear. But there was already a long tradition of growing spineless cactus in India, where smallholder farmers had perfected the art of growing the prickly pear for fruit, and to feed the leaves to their livestock. Now you can learn from them, in a new video that tells how to plant, and grow the cactus, and use it as animal fodder.
Watch the video
Related blog stories
Kiss of death in the cactus garden
Read more
Ewbank, Anne 2019 The Thorny Tale of America’s Favorite Botanist and His Spineless Cacti https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/spineless-cactus
Griffith, M. P. 2004 The origins of an important cactus crop, Opuntia ficusâ€indica (Cactaceae): new molecular evidence. American Journal of Botany, 91(11), 1915-1921.
While listening to a recent broadcast on Belgium’s Radio 1 about the magic lantern and the “lanternists†who entertained paying audiences, I realised that some developments we think off as highly innovative may also be seen as a modification of something that existed hundreds of years ago.
The magic lantern projected images on hand-painted glass slides using a lens with a light source, like a candle flame or oil lamp. The magic lantern was a great success from the 17th to the 19th century, after which it was replaced by cinema and only used by missionaries who used the most up-to-date lanterns and lenses to sway large audiences of up to 700 people.
Most historians credit the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens with the magic lantern’s invention in 1659 because he replaced images etched on mirrors from earlier devices, such as one called Kircher’s lantern, with images painted on glass. This allowed the use of colour and double-layered slide projections to simulate movement, which made for spectacular, detailed and entertaining magic lantern shows.
According to legend, the 17th century Jesuit priest, Kircher, came up with an inventive use of the lantern to convince his sceptical followers. On the glass of his lantern he had painted a realistic image of death, which he projected in the evening on simple farmhouses. The next Sunday morning his church was packed with standing room only. As Kircher was aware that some of his predecessors had been charged with sorcery for using projected images, seen as “the workings of the devilâ€, Kircher was clever enough to demystify the show by explaining that it involved reflection and optics, not magic.
The magic lantern was not invented by any one individual, but very much came from several minds applied to new and different, ever-evolving ways of creating images to project on screens. Some magic lantern shows were quite sophisticated, using multiple lanterns or several lenses to improve magnification and clarity, or to dissolve one scene into another.
At first, the “lanternist,” as the projectionist was known, simply used a plain cotton or canvas sheet, or even just a wall, but the emergence of luminous painted glass slides – with their bright colours and detailed images – also spurred developments in screen technology. Cinema was born in the 1890s, and in the 1930s plastics started to replace cloth screens. Later, various coatings were used that gave the cinema its nickname, “the silver screenâ€.
The silver screen may have wiped out the magic lanterns, but other devices were used over the twentieth century for education and entertainment. Small projectors with 8 mm film were used in schools and for “home movies.” Academic talks were often illustrated with overhead projectors and slides, while the DVD player and the projector that could be attached to the laptop brought videos to much wider audiences. In the 2000s, the Digisoft smart projector was the latest device for sharing sights and sounds with audiences of up to 200 people.
The “lanternist” earned money from organising shows, travelling from place to place with the projector in a box carried on his back. The concept of these early mobile screening entrepreneurs has recently been re-introduced by Access Agriculture, an international organisation that supports ecological farming in developing countries through farmer training videos (see the full video library at: www.accessagriculture.org).
While centuries ago, lanternists were adults, Access Agriculture has established a network of young, ICT-savvy, entrepreneurs who make a business from screening training videos to rural communities. Lanternists travelled from village to village with a small collection of glass slides. Today’s young entrepreneurs are equipped with a Digisoft smart projector, a foldable solar panel and a library of more than 200 videos, each one in multiple languages. The whole kit is small enough to take on a motorcycle, but casts an image large and sharp enough for a whole village. Being able to screen videos on demand, these young people bring entertainment and education to remote areas where there is no electricity or internet.
Like the old lanternists, the youth with their smart projectors are using the best technology of their day, but sharing down-to-earth ideas that family farmers need for a changing world.
Watch a young entrepreneur show videos in rural Africa
On the road with the smart projector in Uganda
Related blogs
Watching videos without smartphones
Families, land and videos in northern Uganda
