E-Agriculture

Question 1 (opens 17 Sept.)

Question 1 (opens 17 Sept.)

 What ICT innovations are being used for farmers to access and exchange the information they need, and for service providers to provide information to farmers?

 


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Ed Dowding
Ed DowdingUnited Kingdom

May I introduce Sustaination? It's like a professional food trade network with an emphasis on SME, sustainability, and relocalisation. 

It's a little like "LinkedIn for local food and farmers" (as Fast Company put it) which makes it quick and easy for food business to be found, connect, and trade.

We use technology to rebalance things in favour of small food businesses. We help you find new trade partners , relocalise , and access real-time opportunities.
 
It's a professional network serving every type of food business , from farm to fork, at every scale and turnover.
 
It's free for most small users (we price by turnover) and you can find out more at www.sustaination.co 
 

Thanks for this input about Sustaination. I read that it is active in the UK. Is it active in any developing country? Or if not, how could it be?

Jean-Claude KAMWENUBUSA
Jean-Claude KAMWENUBUSAASASS-BURUNDIBurundi

Thank you Riggs,

I am a Burundi young entrepreneur on Internet,  ICT in agribusiness and poultry programs with particular attention to a mobile phone connected to web-Internet Protocol (IP) or Over Voice Internet Protocol.

I have my own lands for agriculture in rural area of Burundi but I missed investors to exploit them. I have trained small group of young students in our council for Africa Youth Organization Union (CAYOU) and in Jeancka University Iduka Chapter to use Cell phone connected to help farmers and people in poultry program via a phone associated to a web on Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP).

I am looking for new sponsorer, partner and grant foundation to launch our latest step of this farming project that use mobile phone for food security, health and improving preservation of environment, and skills in ICT, access to shelter, clean water and solar energy in rural area.


Thanks
Jean Claude
Kamwenubusa

Email: [email protected]
 

Fulvio  Sansone
Fulvio SansoneSatADSLBelgium

We are interested in knowing what communications means are used by Farmers in remote regions, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa, to access ICT.

In these regions, Internet access is not always easy unless the user instals a satellite terminal. Classic satellite connections use VSATs which entails hight equipment and service costs.

We provide mini-VSAT based, low cost, high quality internet access via satellite in Sub-Saharan Africa and are interested in bringing our solution to farmers in the region.

Bruce Kisitu
Bruce KisituKIVA Agro Supplies LtdUganda

Fulvio, the communication industry in sub-saharan Africa has developed with telecoms introducing mobile internet (accessible on mobile phones) as well as dongles (modems) etc for computers. These tools are much cheaper to use with internet access as low as $0.4 for 100MB (In Uganda). Don't you think these simple internet points are cheaper than installing VSATs? I think, if a farmer leader has access to an information source, then the entire farmer group is bound to benefit.

Fulvio  Sansone
Fulvio SansoneSatADSLBelgium

Hi Bruce,

Yes of course where mobile broadband is available this is an excellent option for internet access as far as no quality of service is required. We travel extensively in West and Central Africa, and our experience with dongles and mobile internet is very varied. Some times you get good connections up to 200-250Kbps, some times, especially during day time, you struggle to open gmail in html format!!

In addition, mobile broadband while generally available in business districts of large cities, becomes very unreliable or even totally absent in rural areas.

Now, I am not aware of many farmers growing their crops in the centre of Lagos or Luanda!! We have more than 600 active users at the moment and growing by tens per month, and these are mainly SoHos, SMEs or small offices or agencies of large companies in sub-urban or rural areas where mobile broadband is either too unreliable or totally absent. These customers want a reliable, good quality connection, but cannot afford the prices, both equipment and subscription, of classic VSAT. We provide them with a good service available everywhere at a price that is a fraction of classic VSAT. But it is not mobile, of course.

I think our solution might be of interest to farmers to access the internet, for price checking and many other ICT-enabled features. We are currenly in discussions to equip a large number of farms for security purposes.

You can have a look at what we do at:

www.satadsl.net

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKVCJLxjG8Q

 

Rachel Zedeck
Rachel ZedeckBackpack Farm | KenyaKenya

Fulvio.. across the East and Sub Saharan region there are commercial networks including Safaricom, ZAIN and Orange. the majority of commercial or donor funded interventions will partner with an existing network which farmers are linked to.

As Bruce mentions, local bandwidth continues to become more and more affordable for both basic phone, sms and internet access.  The bigger challenge accessing the internet is a more affordable smart phone but even here we have seen cost drop up to 40% in less than 18 months.  I fully expect to see a basic android on the market costing less than $25 in another 18 months.

From people's experience, is it necessary to identify and differentiate different information content/processes and the ICT that is best suited to it? Or is mobile (phone) technology growing fast enough and mobile voice/data service price falling fast enough that one can (should?) wait for this nearly ubiquitious tool to catch up to the information need?

Fulvio  Sansone
Fulvio SansoneSatADSLBelgium

Hi Rachel,

I don't know where you are based, but we travel to Africa all the time. We have in our pockets sim cards of Airtel (DRC, Congo, Burkina Faso, Ghana), Glo (Nigeria), Vodafone (DRC, Kenia), Orange (Ivory Coast, Cameroon), MTN (RSA, Cameroon), just to mention a few.

We know very well the mobile operators offerings in all these countries and I can assure you that the coverage out of large cities is often quite poor already for voice services, totally unreliable for data services. Population density and expected ARPU are such that all these operators will never invest the billions of dollars needed to provide full country coverage. This might partially happen in small and relatively richer countries like Gambia, Rwanda, Guinea Bissau, but will never happen in large countries like Nigeria, Cameroon, DRC, RSA, etc.

So, allow me to disagree with you: mobile cellular broadband will not be the one-size-fits-all solution for internet access in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially for remote regions.

Local bandwidth becomes more and more affordable, as you say, but is and will continue to be limited in coverage to densely populated urban areas. And unless we want to see even stronger urbanisation in these countries, solutions bringing ICT to remote regions at affordable prices should be encouraged.

And we are an existing network, surely smaller than mobile operators network, but totally committed to bringing affordable and ubiquitous internet access to businesses and citizens in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Cheers, Fulvio

 

Bruce Kisitu
Bruce KisituKIVA Agro Supplies LtdUganda

Fulvio, do you offer only internet connection in the communities you are operating or something more than that?