Question 2 (opens 14 Nov.)

For those producer organizations thinking about adopting ICTs, perhaps the very first pieces of the technology they should  think about purchasing are a good used PC, a pirated spreadsheet program like Excel and a mobile phone. Then  find someone who can teach the coop accountant or bookkeeper how to use them. It won't take long before he/she has figured out how to make their accounting tasks easier.Once the coop manager and board members see what can be done with these tools , they will see the advantages and be more receptive to more sophisticated forms of ICT. It's a first step and a simple step and a low cost step in the adoption process 

Hi John Rouse,

How about adding the cheapest printer in the first step of the adoptation process in your recommendations to make it more complete? In this sense talking of practicality and completeness, there is an assurance that you may have printed materials for output.

From our experience in Busuanga Island where fishing is still a major industry after tourism, producer organizations like Kawil-Amianan, an association of lawful live fish traders invested in ICT for security purposes by establishing networks of surveillance posts to monitor illegal fishers which greatly impact their own livelihood. Mobile phones became very handy as almost everybody knows how to operate one. Handheld VHF radios work in areas where there are weak mobile phone signal or no signal at all. The use of GPS also increase accuracy and thus security of fishing operations. ICT to increase productivity in fishing may entail fish finders but these are availed only by bigger and more financially capable fishing operators.

In Senegal, fishermen are now using their cell phone to check the price of fish on various markets before going back to shore and they select the landing ground where the price is the best. Their organization is helping them to find out the best place.

Dear Pierre, it is very interesting to hear how fishermen are using their phones to choose the port of arrival based on prices. Do you have additional information about this? or the name of the organization(s)?

thanks,

Lisa

What are the priority areas that producer organizations should invest in with regard to ICT?

I think that there is no one answer for this question because the conditions vary greatly for each producer organization, region, country, etc., but in a general, I think that producer organizations need to focus on investment that allows them to function relatively independantly given that reliable communcation technolgies may be an issue. I think the focus should be on developing their own databse of information and making it available to their members in a comfortable user friendly environment. What specifically do I mean by this?

• I mean they need to buy a computer(s) and stock it(them) with as much relevant information as possible (for example this could mean multimedia materials on CD or DVD, or accessed by internet if that is possible). These materials could even be transfered to other media depending on what technolgy is appropriate. This could function as the basis of learning center for the organization. Therefore it must be a user friendly location where the members could feel comfortable in learning and using this technolgy. 

I think that this is the most important factor is not buying technolgy but helping to create socially constructed knowledge about the computer as a useful tool to improve the farmers lives. That is to say that it is necessary for the members of the producer organizations to accept and believe that they can improve their lives by embracing the use of technolgy. This means education about the benefits of adopting techolgy and then farmers msut see measureable impacts on their  lives.

So in short, the first priority should be education, then creation of a knowledge base on a computer, and then encouraging access of the average farmer, so they are not reliant on "the computer person" of the cooperative. ICT should be about empowerment of the members.

Peter

I agree with you Peter. Education as a way of empowering the people behind the organization should be given utmost importance. In the greater scheme of things, individual empowerment through education becomes social empowerment. And when an organization is socially empowered, their business enterprise becomes a social enterprise. Let me cite the example of an organization whose one of the founding officials I just had a discussion with on Facebook.

E-Veritas Trading (http://www.e-veritas.org/) is business enterprise with heavy emphasis on ethical and moral values. It believes in and promotes the interest of People, Planet, and Profit, in that order. Guided by the Catholic Social Teaching, it creates “a social enterprise that promotes the common good and human values of integrity, solidarity and creativity by making the urban and rural poor take personal responsibility for a common vision.” Among its various activities is establishing supply links with farmers from among indigenous peoples like the Mangyans in Mindoro and the Kalanguya in Nueva Viscaya (rural poor), have them deliver their farm produce to the members of the cooperative of the Parish of the Risen Christ in Tondo (urban poor), who will then sell the products to the city folks through the use of computers and mobile phones.

Here, we are seeing a partnership and a forming of a society of poor people from both rural and urban areas, and together empowering one another through an enterprise that is both business, social, and moral. The organic farming techniques employed by the indigenous people ensure that the planet is respected and sustainability is observed. The rural farmers communicate with the urban distributors through mobile phones, but all them are aware of their responsibility and accountability to one another (People), to the environment (Planet), and to their source of living (Profit).

If education is seen as empowering to producer organizations (for, indeed, it is), let it be an education on ICT and its business and social implications and moral values.

I agree with you Peter.  Agriculture is a complex system, encompassing a wide range of acitivities and issues.  The ICT side is also becoming more complex. Maybe the limitations to the adoption of ICTs in agriculture lie in the education levels and cultural background of rural communities, as well as a lack of motivation emanating from the farmer's scant perception of ICT's usefulness.   This can be achieved if we can educate the farmers to handle growing volumes of data.  In this context, ICT can become a powerful tool for farmers to access and organize the available knowledge. 

- Koy

That is very true, Pete!

I remember the topic Knowledge Management and it would really work out in the agriculture sector. But yes, farmers must be educated in order to maximize the use of the computers and the software available.

Kelly

The education of farmers or producer organizations boomerangs back to the capacity of producer organizations to effectively utilize ICT, which sends us back to my initial contention that there needs to be a strong knowledge-base first so that resources do not go to waste - for instance, in the case of farmers requiring ICT capacity building and skills development, a good and very simple model could be conceived that would address the capacity and skills training needs of the respondents with the eventual end result of ICT implementation in their operations.  The priority area, therefore, in this respect, is not really the purchase of ICT equipment or materials but framework or paradigm modelling.  

Regards,

Bryan