Question 2 (opens 19 Sept.)

I totally agree with you! I think we need to agree (if possible) on a definition. I am not sure what the moderator meant by "sustainable" in the question. That is the driving force for this partcular question though. But I wonder if the definition of sustainability in this case will differ from the century old definition of sustainability in international development projects.

With my study, I was interested in the

i) 'Pilot' as a proof of concept stage where the ICT4Ag advisory service is tested in a small market either with support from donors or self funding.

ii) 'Scaling' occurs after successful piloting and with commercial, the service provider may begin charging for fees while the public services may look more at increasing geographic coverage or adding more complex and advanced services.

iii) 'Sustainable' stage happens when the commercial service provider 'breaks even' and start making profit or may have minor dependence on external support for regular services. For non-commercial services, the continuation after the donor support ends.

Lets' hear from the moderator as well as others.

Ben

Yes.. commercialism does rule and the only way to ensure scalable impact and growth is financial self-sustainability.  Revneue doesn't have to be generated solely from the sale of content but also advertising revenue.  It will simply be at the discretion of the enterprise to what commercial enterprise or products they support.   When our sms content was free, no one wanted it. When we charged, more than 1,200 users registered.  We need to stop underestimating smallholder farmers (AKA rural communities) and their potential as commercial consumers.   Yes, I would love to secure grants to continue our proejct development and testing but my fear is we would derail our own success.

Rachel’s point that Backpack Farm’s content was ignored when free, but subscribed to when associated with an economic value is fascinating. Do others have similar or different experiences to share?

The moderator is not going to provide any more specific direction on question 2. :-)

The fact that a discussion about what is “sustainable” has begun here indicates that there will be value in it happening. People who prefer not to debate the term are most welcome to interject examples and ideas about sustainability with a note on what “type” of sustainability refers.

How’s that?

cheers, Michael the moderator/facilitator

Sure, we all know the controversies with such terms so its better to leave it as it is. On the ground, service providers know whether their ICT for Ag solutions are sustainable or not :).

Cheers

Be

Hi all,

My name is Paul Nyende, MD of a for profit private company, operating in Uganda.  I wish to jump in here and give an example of:

i) 'Scaling up' of a successful pilot with FAO and IFAD, as a commercial service provider, where we have been charging fees for an agricultural market information and brokerage service in Uganda (www.agrinetug.net) . We have increased our geographic coverage and further developed the service (business model) to suit our clients.

We (AgriNet Uganda Ltd) are also an example of 'Sustainability' that has been initially kick stated external support (contracts from public organizations) and now we have continued to offer the service and earning revenue from offering services from the “real” clients and they (clients farmers & traders) paying for it.

Paul Nyende

AgriNet Uganda Ltd

Not surprisingly, serious investment is required to build a "sustainable" advisory service for smallholders where:

1. The content is valuable - demand driven, timely, accurate, and relevant

2. The means of delivery is user friendly - via technology that is suitable to the local context, language compatibile and interactive

3. The service is affordable - robust partnerships between advisory service providers and telecom service providers (who are often not the same) are one way to offer subscription to extremely affordable voice and data services at scale to farmers in a country

Through the e-choupal program (http://www.itcportal.com/sustainability/lets-put-india-first/echoupal.aspx), a private company, ITC limited, provided price info and other ag advisory services to soy (and other) famers in India that also facilitated the sale of soybeans by the farmers directly to them making it not only profitable for the private company to implement the program due to more efficient procurement and lower transaction costs, but also profitable for the farmers to use the service due to higher prices.

what other models exist out there of commercially viable e-extension services?

Again, I here share an example of Agrinet (www.agrinetug.net), a private company that does e-market intelligence and brokerage service provision. We use sms mobile phone service, linked to physical information board, strategically located in market places, to collect and disseminate market intelligence. The intelligence collected and disseminated by our network of agents is then used to broker deals, where we earn a commission for each deal brokered 

Paul 

Esoko is a private company based in Ghana and Mauritius that has built a communication medium to facilitate communication and information sharing along the agricultural value chain. Our mobile- and web-based agricultural market intelligence platform can be white-labelled for organizations to collect, manage & distribute information and for smallholder to receive targeted, relevant content directly on their phones. 

We find that the some of the greatest costs to provide valuable service to end users are:

1. data collection, which requires a huge amount of management to ensure it is accurate and comes at a regular frequency, and 
2. marketing and continual support to build awareness about the service. 

In order to cover the costs, we earn revenues by:

1. selling subscriptions to our platform to individuals, NGOs, agribusinesses, and government
2. charging a fee on SMS 
3. providing consulting and training services for deployment of the technology

In order to reach smallholders directly, you typically have to have a large distribution force like a mobile telecom. But we have been more successful in getting farmers registered to get information through other organizations like businesses, associations or projects. 

The first question, "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?" has received ample feedback!

I have started a summary of the various innovations mentioned by participants of this forum. This is a brief list, but those of you who are just joining the discussions now might find it useful to catch up to Question 2.

• Summary of innovations mentioned by participants

Lisa Cespedes
e-Agriculture Team