Climate Adaptation Skill Building among Smallholder Farmers - An Experimental Study on Effective Skill Training Methods in South Indian Villages

Climate Change has got far reaching adverse effect on Agriculture in developing countries accentuating rural poverty. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has been advocating for Climate-Smart Agriculture which encompasses, among other things: Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes; adapting and building resilience to climate change and reducing and/or removing greenhouse gases emissions, where possible. Adaptation measures include many agriculture techniques. The extension agencies in developing countries have the key challenge of enhancing the adaptation skill of small holder farmers to reduce their vulnerability. Aim of the Experiment and Locale: The aim of this experiment was to test the comparative effectiveness of Video Teaching vis-a-vice Method Demonstration in imparting skills among smallholder farmers of a climate technology namely “Preparation of Enriched Farm Yard Manure”. This six-month long experiment was conducted in drought-prone villages of Erode district of Tamil Nadu, South India. Methodology: The sophisticated experimental design- The Randomized Block Design (RBD) was used to test the effectiveness of the treatments. The RBD was particularly chosen to follow the principles of the experimental design namely Replication, Randomization and Local Control. Three replications of experimental treatments: Video Teaching, Method Demonstration and Video Teaching + Method Demonstration were set up to expose 45 smallholder farmers carefully chosen as experimental subjects. The homogeneity of the technical content (Preparation of Enriched Farm Yard Manure) among all the three treatments was ensured through systematic standardization procedure with help of panel of experts. The possible extraneous variables arising out of differing socio-economic characteristics of subjects were controlled through pretesting and matching for homogeneity. The dependent variable was the Skill Gain among the subjects while the independent variables were the three treatments. Sequentially, first the subjects’ skill level in handling the skill practice was assessed prior to the experiment. The subjects then were exposed to the treatments as per the design. Finally the skill levels of the subjects were again assessed immediately after the treatments. The Skill Gain was measured and the effect of the treatments was compared using Paired‘t’ test and ANOVA test.   Results: The results showed that all the three treatments: Video Teaching, Method Demonstration and Video Teaching + Method Demonstration significantly raised the skill levels of subjects. At the end of the experiment the subjects exposed to these three treatments respectively possessed adjusted Mean Skill Scores of the three treatments were 13.90, 17.50 and 17.87 respectively. They were to possess 45.26 per cent, 77.53 per cent and 90.16 per cent of the skill sets required for scientific preparation of the Enriched Farm Yard Manure. ANOVA test showed F value of 10.37 (<.01) indicating significant effect of treatments. Thus, the treatments exposed to the subjects had the rank order of effectiveness as: Video Teaching + Method Demonstration, Method Demonstration and Video Teaching in terms of Skill Gain among the subjects.     Conclusion: Video Teaching is comparable, though not equally effective, with Method Demonstration, implying that it can be used to transfer climate adaptation skills across geographies.