Dr Nitya Ghotge, Founder Director, Anthra, delivering a presentation on “Promoting natural animal health through videos” at the virtual workshop titled “Learn and Earn from Natural Farming Videos,” organised jointly by MANAGE, the National Coalition for Natural Farming and Access Agriculture on 6 April 2022. Here’s the link to the webinar recording https://youtu.be/7kz2Qa2oD-c. For more information, visit Access Agriculture https://www.accessagriculture.org/

1. Promoting Natural Animal Health
through videos
Dr Nitya Ghotge
Anthra & Access Agriculture partner

2. About Anthra
• Founded in 1992 by a team of women veterinarians to reach out, connect, and address
the problems faced by livestock rearing communities.
• Focus on smallholder farmers, pastoralists, adivasis, dalits, women and others who
remain hidden from mainstream development.
• Over the years we have realized that development has several dimensions and problems
are best addressed by collectively working with communities. Some of the best solutions
blend “modern” science with peoples’ traditional knowledge and practices.
• Together with these communities, Anthra has built a strong base of evidence-based
practices which are enduring, sustainable, equitable, and respectful of peoples’
knowledge and wisdom.
• Today, Anthra is a resource centre that continues to offer support in the areas of
livestock, biodiversity, and livelihood.
www.anthra.org

3. www.anthra.org
Some of our Publications

4. Problems we perceived along the way
• Not enough veterinarians and their outreach is poor in rural areas
• Low literacy rates amongst livestock keepers, especially pastoralists, so they need
different methods of communication
• Despite training 1000’s of animal health workers, uptake of ethnoveterinary
practices has been poor
• Increase in use of chemicals and antibiotics as medical shops and pharmaceutical
companies penetrated the rural areas, especially in the last 20 years
www.anthra.org

5. Our learnings
• Rural people respond very well to Access Agriculture videos
• A change in practices was noticed, such as decrease in use of pesticides,
antibiotics etc. after seeing a powerful, well-designed video
• Especially women responded positively to well-made videos
• We had good responses in our projects om maternal and child health, and
livestock care
www.anthra.org

6. Partnering with Access Agriculture
2015 to 2022
Met the team at the same time as we were thinking of making videos on livestock care in 2015
Two of our staff members attended a workshop organized by Access Agriculture
Met Atul Pagar who had been trained by Access Agriculture and who started making the videos
Selected topics which we then prioritized and helped write scripts for
Several videos made on the following topics in livestock: bloat, fever, diarrhea, worms , mastitis
In the pipeline are: poultry care, making ghee, sheep care, foot rot
We have helped review several scripts for technical content
www.anthra.org

7. Responses
• Livestock keepers play an active role in the video-making process, so it is a
participatory way to merge scientific with local knowledge
• The videos have become an integral part of our training programmes. Training
programmes are often a part of our projects and every year at least 6 training
programmes are conducted for different livestock rearing communities
• Videos have been very well received amongst livestock owners. We reach out to
over 40,000 livestock owners, including mobile pastoralists, through our partner
networks in Maharashtra and other states
• Farmers are able to re-play the videos and make medicines as per their need
• Today, we are also sharing the videos with the Dept of Animal Husbandry,
Government of Maharashtra, to help them kickstart a programme on natural
livestock farming
www.anthra.org