How Participatory Videos Drive Agroecological Transformation

In the agroecological transformation, farmers are the key stakeholders who expected to shift from conventional farming systems — characterised by intensive inputs, monocropping, and a focus on crop productivity — to systems that emphasise low or natural inputs, multi-cropping, circularity, interlinkages, and factor productivity. However, a lack of practical knowledge relevant to the local context remains a major limiting factor for the large-scale adoption of agroecological practices by the farmers.  

To address this challenge, GIZ is building the capacities of local implementation partners (NGOs) in participatory video production focusing on agroecological practices under the JIVA programme of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) facilitated by the Indo-German development cooperation project Support to Agroecological Transformation Processes in India (SuATI).   

GIZ, in collaboration with Drishti, a technical agency, is providing training on participatory video production to farmers and community resource persons in five JIVA projects spread across Odisha, Jharkhand, Telangana, Maharashtra, and Chhattisgarh in India. The training is conducted in two phases, each lasting six days.  

In the first phase, the focus is on topic selection—identifying the problem, interventions, and solutions—subject identification, filming process, types of shots, basic rules of framing, filming equipment, shooting process, sound and lighting, and field exercises. The second phase focuses on the editing process, including sessions on editing software, editing basics, tips, and exporting edited videos. It also covers video sharing, including individual, group, online, and offline sharing. 

Both phases of the training have been completed for two projects in Odisha and Jharkhand. The second phase of the training will be completed by the end of November for the remaining three projects.  During the training, farmers are actively involved in video production and take on the role of the protagonists in the stories. They explain challenges and share their views, experiences, and learnings in their own words. By acquiring video production skills, participants have created short videos on various themes, including bio-input preparation, seed treatment, kitchen gardening, the system of rice intensification, and low-input agriculture. 

These participatory videos are produced in local languages and embedded in local contexts, using familiar people and resources. This makes them easy to understand, relevant, and credible knowledge resources.   Community resource persons aim to use these videos in communication campaigns to raise awareness among fellow farmers about agroecological farming practices tailored to local agro-climatic conditions. 

Implementation partners believe that the development and dissemination of participatory videos will become an integral part of their internal and external communication strategies. 

 Farmers and community resource persons now have a powerful tool to capture local innovations, farming practices, untold  stories, and impacts of agroecology. They aim to use these videos for knowledge sharing – both individual and in groups – and to enable the adoption of agroecological practices. 

The videos will also support facilitated learning by encouraging discussions on agroecological processes and will be used in in-person farmer training. Additionally, the implementation partners are enthusiastic about sharing locally produced videos on various platforms, including focused group platforms (WhatsApp and Telegram) and open media platforms (YouTube and Facebook), to raise broader awareness for agroecological transformation.