Shamba shape-up : or how to make farming a cool business

In the strive to get smart dissemination channels to reach out smallholder farmers, the CGIAR along with many other partners set up a TV show, named shamba shape-up (in swahili shamba means farm), that gives agricultural advise from experts, including the results from research done in my institute.

The shows contain useful information to improve agricultural productivity for example about how to cope with climate change, how to bread and benefit from livestock, about new products on market like insurances or new or improved crops. The program is made in Swahili and in English and is shown on Citizen TV, a TV station that reaches out to all urban and rural Kenyan, as well as to Uganda and Tanzania. After the show, if you live in Kenya, you can send an sms to 30606 with your name and postal address, and then a leaflet summarizing the TV show with the essential contacts will be sent to you for free. You can also download the leaflet from the website or follow on Facebook, on Twitter or by subscribing by mail. A pretty cool way to reach out to many smallholder farmers, offering them different channels to access information.

Here is one episode :

Thanks to the order of leaflet with sms, Shamba shape-up has a wide collection of phone numbers of farmers, who disclosed themselves as being interested to improve their farm. Shamba shape-up could therefore be a very interesting partner to spread relevant information as well as provide database of potentially contributing farmers for crowed-sourcing, i.e. farmers who could share information about their farms with us.

In all cases, it is an interesting source of information, not only for smallholder farmers in Kenya, but for all of you who are interested about what real rural Kenyan problems are. It might also be an eye-opener for those of you who still believe that these people are still waiting for your second hand clothes :-) .

So check it out here!