HIV/AIDS Programming for Rural Audiences – Broadcast Training
Radio Contributes to Survival
By Vijay Cuddeford
HIV/AIDS is much more than a health problem in rural communities. Because it kills or weakens adults in the prime of their working life, it also has a severe impact on farming and food security. This is an important consideration if you are going to provide useful programming to rural audiences.
In Sub-Saharan Africa, 7 million agricultural workers have already died from AIDS-related illnesses. Before the year 2020, it is estimated that at least 16 million more will die. Death and illness challenge a family's capacity to feed itself. HIV/AIDS is changing farming and rural environments, and stressing the social structure and bonds of rural communities. The impact of the disease comes at a time when many rural people are already having difficulty coping with drought, low crop prices, and climate change. Healthy adults, especially women, must care for the sick, attend to farm chores and household work, and grieve for the dead. With so many people sick and dying, the amount of labour available to a household is reduced and the labour-intensive traditional farming practices used in many areas are particularly vulnerable.
The impacts on rural households and agricultural productivity are profound and complex. They include:
- Less time for agricultural and household activities, especially labour-intensive tasks such as weeding, ploughing, harvesting, and water and fuel collection.
- Interruption of farm work after a death. While in mourning, many communities do not do farm work for a period of time, often several days.
- The loss of traditional agricultural knowledge and other skills as experienced farmers die.
- Less cash to buy goods which cannot be produced on the farm, such as soap and cooking oil.
- Less money for school fees and medicine.
- The removal of children from school, especially girls, to help with chores.
- The sale of household assets such as agricultural tools, livestock, bicycles, and radios, often at very low cost, to pay for medicines and funerals.
- A reduction in the quantity and quality of meals, leading to malnutrition, decreased immunity to general infection, and increased child mortality.
- An increase in women's work load. Women must care for children and sick relatives, grieve for the dead, care for children, and do the bulk of the farm work.
- Reduced access to credit and support from extension workers, after the male head of the household dies.
- Neglect of livestock, resulting in thefts and diseases, and depriving the family of milk and other animal foods.
- Exhaustion of extended village and community support mechanisms. As productive adults die, social networks, once the foundation of communities, are shattered.
- Disinheritance of widows after their husbands die, and exclusion from wider kinship networks.
Rural radio stations can broadcast ideas and information about ways of coping with these impacts. As we've seen, HIV/AIDS limits the availability of labour. People need information about how to produce more food in less time with fewer resources. Radio programs about labour-saving practices, appropriate technologies, and communal action will help. Whenever possible, demonstrate strategies that are based on current or traditional practices in the listening area.
Labour-Saving Practices
Many valuable strategies to help rural people cope with the impact of HIV/AIDS focus on alternative cropping, raising livestock, or innovative tools which save farmers time. However, it's important to ensure that these practices also maintain yields and provide a nutritious diet.
Examples include the use of:
- Labour-saving devices such as threshing machines, mills, well pulleys, lighter ploughs and hoes.
- Zero or minimum tillage to reduce weeding time.
- Intercropping and mulching to reduce weeding time.
- Early maturing, disease- and drought-resistant crop varieties.
- High-protein fodder trees and shrubs to reduce feed costs.
- Multipurpose carts made of cheaper construction material, for carrying water and other inputs.
- Raising small stock such as poultry, rabbits, bees, sheep and goats. Small stock take less time to raise, reducing spoilage and need for long-term preservation. Poultry and rabbits reproduce quickly, thus providing a steady supply of protein. They can also be housed on small pieces of land, and require small amounts of feed and water.
More Efficient Use of On-Farm Resources
Another category of useful strategies to integrate into radio broadcasts is the practice of recycling on-farm resources, to reduce the need for purchased inputs.
The impacts on rural households and agricultural productivity are profound and complex. They include:
- Feed crop residues to livestock, reducing the need for pasturing or herding.
- Use manure to fertilize crops; manure can also be used to produce biogas fuel.
- Use more compost and organic fertilizers.
- Plant live fences to supply firewood, fodder and fruits.
- Intercrop cereals with legumes to provide nitrogen and smother weeds.
Community Action
Finally, consider radio programs that highlight activities that communities can undertake together.
For example:
- Community work forces, labour sharing clubs, and collective production of food crops.
- Revival of indigenous social safety nets such as "zunde ramambo" (or "chief's granary") in Zimbabwe. In zunde ramambo, the chief sets aside a plot of land and the community provides labour. The produce generated is given to the most vulnerable households. (See script 7 in package 62)
- Community-based child care to free women to work in or outside the home.
- Community-run micro-enterprises and income-generating projects to produce food and cash.
The impact of HIV/AIDS goes far beyond individual or communal health issues. People in rural communities need information about basic survival. Broadcasters can investigate successful strategies for coping with the loss of labour, and the resulting loss of food production, and present them in a variety of formats.
