PH DA Capturing The Full Power Of The Digital

In this Digital Age, the DA-ATI should be #1 in terms of knowledge dissemination. First Class.

The Agricultural Training Institute, ATI, is the official training arm of the Department of Agriculture, DA – as such, it should be on top of the situation. Well, with the video above, it’s trying to be. But there is more to be done. Like: Showing every single step. Putting in English captions.

Do you realize that prior knowledge is no longer a barrier to learning anything new?

That video is on practical ensiling with plastic bags, for the goats: using sugarcane tops, corn, sorghum, napier, even rice straw. Ensiling keeps the nutrients and moisture in the leaves while they await to be fed to livestock.

ATI’s digital work has just begun! In its own website, ATI says:

Extension services continue to evolve. With the challenges that extension workers and farmers face, the Agricultural Training Institute (ATI) continues to explore various strategies to improve its efforts as the extension and training arm of the Department of Agriculture.

The top image is my screen grab of a demonstration of “Paano Ang Wastong Paggawa Ng Silage?” (What Is The Right Way To Prepare Silage?) It is an evolution of ATI extension because it is virtual, not simply physical.

Now, there are 41 training centers all in all under ATI. If extension is to evolve, and it should, without planning and coordination, we are talking of 41 training centers producing similar video materials on a total of 41 Philippine crops (my low estimate)!

(1) Abaca
(2) Ampalaya
(3) Avocado
(4) Banana
(5) Beans
(6) Cabbage
(7) Calamansi
(8) Cassava
(9) Chico
(10) Coconut
(11) Coffee
(12) Corn 
(13) Cotton
(14) Cucumber
(15) Durian
(16) Eggplant
(17) Garlic
(18) Hot pepper
(19) Jackfruit
(20) Lanzones
(21) Mabolo
(22) Mango
(23) Mungo
(24) Okra
(25) Onion
(26) Papaya
(27) Passion fruit
(28) Peanut
(29)  Pineapple
(30) Pomelo
(31) Rambutan
(32) Rice
(33) Santol
(34) Squash
(35) Strawberry
(36) Sugarcane
(37) Sweet pepper
(38) Sweet potato
(39) Tobacco
(40) Tomato
(41) Watermelon

That’s only my fast list. (And I have not made mention of livestock.)

What am I driving at here? Already, the ATI has 41 crops to produce learning materials for.

Careful!

The ATI must first prepare separate working sets of the digital materials for the 41 crops. Initially, should the ATI distribute the work so that each of the centers works on only 1 crop? Maybe, but there should be Institute-wide final review and recommendation.

Here is the digital package I’m thinking for each crop:

I separate the Learning Materials (texts & still images) from the Training Materials (video accompanied by captions).

The Learning Materialsshould include the following (along with sources of data & information):

(1) Names of crop: common and local
(2) Economic importance:
(3) Uses

The Training Materialsshould show digitally everything from selecting planting materials to caring to harvesting to marketing. Every single step.

ATI, with the Digital Age, you never had it so good! Don’t make our farmers feel bad by failing them!@517