Panel Discussion - Scope, Opportunities and Challenges of Agri-Journalism in India

Information is crucial for taking or arriving at right decisions, it becomes an economic action that can be produced, purchased and sold. Although, agriculture is a backbone of many countries, the investment in agriculture and rural development is still lagging. Communication for agriculture is not seen as a major priority and the role of the media as an effective player in agricultural and rural development. There is hardly any meaningful debate on farmers’ issues with facts and figures. There are hardly any media that covers exclusive news on rural India in general and agriculture in particular, although 70 per cent of the population lived there. The information on agriculture coverage is limited to a particular topic such as market and market prices, advertisement, stock market, etc., in most of the medium. Many a times, this piece of information might be written by an exclusive scientist, interested journalist or as usual by the news reporters, who have the journalist skills but, not able to translate things. There is a lack of skilled manpower to cover all aspects of agriculture such as crop production output, national GDP, overcome farmer problems, farm machinery and implements, farmer lifestyle, ways of doubling of farmer income etc. This panel discussion has come up with a suggestion to start a one year Post Graduate Diploma in Agri-journalism course to train the interested students, working professionals and the budding entrepreneurs to contribute to the industry as well as farming community.