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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An interesting development which will definitely help the seed trade and indeed any input. <div></div><div>It would be interesting to know why a 12 digit number...do the digits have a meaning so that multiple products from different vendors can be authenticated by the same MAS using the number coding as the differentiating elements and hence making the algorithm for authentication easier to handle?<div>
<br></div><div>Given the plethora of support organizations, this
initiative needs to be driven by a focus on sustainability...what measure of this is integrated into the implementation?</div><div><br></div><div>Kiringai</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon,
Hi! I am John Batchelor, farmers son, clinical data manager & founder of WeFarmIt. We are a social enterprise developing social networking platforms and cloud computing for the farming and food community. We aim to build food communities everywhere and plug them into the Wefarmit "Farm Cloud" platform and associated apps like the first one we released a few weeks ago "HERDit". This is a simple app that we are expanding on and will soon be bringing out an international update. Despite it being created initially for UK farmers to meet local regulations we are finding farmers everywhere are using it to keep track of their herd. We have a load of great features we are working on for future releases.
We currently do all of the above on a shoestring budget and with the help of volunteer coders I have been lucky enough to find. Finding proper funding to take us to the next step is now our main priority. My long term goal is to give every farmer access to quality and affordable (free where possible) web and mobile apps for interconnectivity, productivity and compliance. We are going for a ride on The Digital Tractor and we want you to join us!:)
I always love hearing about other for-profit models that understand the potential of frugal innovation! Thank you for sharing the model. I look forward to its expansion into horticulture crops vs. livestock management.
UK uplands smartphone trial (Bodmin Moor Livestock Initiative)
At the end of October I will be helping to kick off a smartphone project with 12 farmers in the UK uplands. They are all livestock farmers farming on Bodmin Moor and I am helping with the project. The plan is to equip 12 local farmers that have shown an interest in ICT but have little experience of it. We will be training them up in the use of mobile devices and helping them make use of devices in their day to day work. The problem is still one of connectivity in rural areas. I know it is hard to believe in the UK but a number of farmers (including myself until 3 years ago) had no access to broadband of any kind be it wired or wireless. Although 3G has improved and we are soon promised 4GLTE the problem is bigger than that. The digital divide between urban and rural areas has a longer lasting effect and once rural areas do get connected that is just the start of the battle. Training and ag tech mentoring schemes are what is needed to get the rural population up to the level of ICT skills. Training can come in many forms, e-learning and instructor led even things like playing Angry Birds just to get used to touch screens. The younger generation take this for granted sometimes but these basic ICT skills are missing in a number of "not spot" areas. I imagine training challenges could take longer to overcome than the network coverage problem.
The first question is very interesting, and all comments bring interesting view. From my own experience in Mali and India, there are different ways of providing the benefit of technologies to farmers. There are imho two strategies: one is direct contact, and one is indirect.
Let's start with indirect strategy: providing the power of ICT to farmers through intermediaries. In our operations, I've identified at least three types of intermediaries, with different opoprtunities and challenges. The first type a community-based intermediary that is litterate (usually both text-literate and minimally ICT-literate). This person is the contact point for farmers to provide or receive information. The best example is the few SMS-based market information system that have been deployed in differen countries. They are usually not accessible by farmers and they couldn't use directly but it is possible to find someone in the community that can serve as proxy. To date, to the best of my knowledge, those approaches have largely failed. The major reason of failure is due to the fact that such intermediary position is usually far from being a full-time job, and the incentive for the intermediaries are usually low, while they are the critical element in the overall architecture. We have experience this type of systems in Mali and have witness this kind of issues. We also witnesses other issues such as gender, where literate intermediaries are usually men and in our case the producers were mainly women.
The second option, is an organizational intermediary. This is the case where farmers are already strcutured in e.g. cooperatives. Usually such existing cooperatives are efficient in self-management (connecting members between them). The managers of cooperatives are also usually middle-class educated person that can be trained to use ICT, and (s)he serves as the ict proxy to provide and retrieve information in systems: sharing issues, expertise requirements, trading offers, etc. These types of solutions work well in structured communities, but if such organizationnal strcutures are not existing, it is far from easy to start one from scratch.
The last option for itnermediaries is what i cann news-proxy, where ICT empowers organizations that are source of news to farmers. Here the idea is to enable community radios with ICT and allow them to be the relay for information to farmers, as welll as collector of information. Like for the previous setup, the link between people and their community radio is already in place, so it makes things easiers. The big advantage of such solutions is that it is already existing all over e.g. Africa. We have been setting-up such a system in Mali with 5 community radios.
In the last two cases, as one commenter mentioned, the fact that usb data dongles are now widely available makes things relatively easy to deploy. But there are still lots of places where community radio stations don't have computers, or are not covered by a mobile data service. In that case the only option is to rely on mobile telephony and voice services: using voice-based services to connect radio stations to the web where they can get and put information. Here again, in our project in Mali 1 radio is in such a case and use voice technology to access audio file that provide market information. The big advantage of this approach too is that it does not require anything at the farmer end, and those with or without mobile can be reached.
Finally, the direct access solution is by far the most difficult optin, but imho the only one that is potentially sustainable. Here there is no other choice that using voice technology (IVR) to deliver services to farmres. Due to illiteracy and/or capacity of their phone, this is in most cases the only option. the major difficulty here is the design of the interface so that it is usable by farmers. We have been focusing on that approach in India (farmer helpline) and in Mali (news report) with so far relatively good success.
Obviously, all these approaches are complementary and can be mixed to build a complete ecostem of services for farmers.
Cheers
Steph
The link below is to a recent article in The Guardian that describes the use of ICT by a farmer in Kenya. While it's written in a style for a general audience, it also profiles broader issues and has quotes from decision makers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/26/new-technology-farming-films-africa
Hope that helps
Mark Varner
The iCow approach was developed in Kenya for small-holder dairy farmers and helps them manage their cows to have a greater profit. While it uses the "i" moniker, the approach is not a smartphone approach, but rather it uses SMS text messages sent from/to a 'short code' that goes into a server. Farmers receive SMS reminders of when tasks must be accomplished for individual cows, but as a dairy expert and son/brother of dairy farmers, the linking to local veterinarians and artificial insemination technicians is a key component. Additionally, matching advice on feed supplementation to milk production level helps maximize profits.
Evaluation of iCow indicated that besides reduced spending on purchased feeds, there was increased market and incomes, reduction of animal illness and mortality and increased customers reported by AI providers. This later aspect is important for the long-term quality of the cattle, and thus sustainability.
Hope this helps
Mark
iCow is phenomenal... I think the critical tipping point is the financial support the team received to develop both expert content and a technically sound user experience. We can't hope to see more scalable models until more commercial equity is made available to both incubation and growth stage ventures.
A very intersting point Rachel. In fact sustainability may rest not only on finding the right business or partnership models, but also on how new innovation is fostered.
The Backpack Farm Agriculture Program (BPF) distributes packages of “green” farming inputs and training through a network of franchise training and distribution centers expanding across rural Kenya. The BPF is an internationally recognized social enterprise committed to transforming Arica’s smallholder farmers into agri-preneurs— empowered to feed themselves and the world.
Our grassroots program is now enhanced by the first crop-specific, mobile phone-delivered agriculture training content designed specifically to support smallholder farmer's primary production in Kenya and the East Africa region delivered in both English and Swahili. We deliver content via both sms and basic smart phone application. Our sms content includes farming tips for 20 specific crops. the more comprehensive mobile application includes 5 sections including training videos, crop specific production models, crops & diseases.
Yes, we are differentiating the target audience. The smallholder farming community encompasses both subsistence and semi-commercial smallholders on 2-5 acres. We are committed to supporting both with the critical advice and technical information to improve the quality and quantity of their crops.
The benefits of our commercial model include: