Dear All

It was a pleasure to read some of the many solutions that were provided by participants. I'd like to share another case/field example of ICT use in agriculture here in the Caribbean.

RevoFarm provides weather and market information as it relates to project windspeed, rainfall, UV index etc via SMS stext messaging system. This information is provided by their business partner in the USA who analysis this data through their systems. 

As it relates to pricing information, farmers have been able to get up to 50% more in the market by knowing the price via RevoFarm's ICT system. Prior to this producers would have to depend on the buyers to access price information and this was sometimes inaccurate.   Farmers are paying 200 Jamaican dollars per month which is equivalent to $2US per month to access which RevoFarm refers to as their basic services. There are other services with a larger range of fees but this is the minimum making it extremely affordable. The aim is to reach all farmers no matter their level of busines and to assist in boosting their income.   Clearly in this case the cost of technology is not a barrier to its access, while its sutiability is of the best fit. This also exemplifies the power of knowledge and information sharing which has an empowering effect on many differnt types of stakeholders, hence hence its powerful role in this situation. Despite these benefits the uptake of new technologies have always been quite slow in the regional agricultural sphere with some island sectors ahead of others.   "The uptake of the technology is not as we want. We have approx 1000 farmers on our platform. We have not gathered farmers via advertising or traditional marketing just yet. Our farmers are through our current network. We are now working with key stakeholders/partners to push our services out to boost our user numbers by the end of this year." --From Mr. Ricardo Gowdie, Co owner Revo Farms   Best Keron Tech4agri    

 

From activities via Tech4agri I would like to share these case studies. 

Case Study 1 Signs of Unlimited Love (SOUL) Multi-purpose Cooperative Location: Dominica  Contact: Mr. Eber Ravariere - President Interview    SOUL Multi-purpose Cooperative is a youth based group that seeks to improve the lives of people living in rural communities by creating employment in the Agricultural & Agro-Processing industries. It started off as a social group that did community outreach - after schol programmes, community beautification and upkeep, beach clean ups and other church activities. They were advised to formalise the group to benefit members and so SOUL was born   The group focuses on primary production and added value processing as well as the subsequent marketing and sale of products. SOUL Enterprise is officially registered with a board of directors and is based in the North Eastern District of Dominica.   Eber states: "Part of our development strategy as social entrepreneurs, we want to use ICTs to scale. We are currently partnering with regional development agencies to create the infrastructure fr our projects"   The group is building a greenhouse as a nursey for vegetable production that will have a rainwater harvesting structure which in turn feeds an automated drip irrigation system. They would also like to include a supporting aquaponics system.   In relation to Horticulture based systems, the group has an ongoing sweet potato project, done with support from the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development institute (CARDI) SOUL hope to build a facility that is fitted with solar and wind power which will be used for agroprocessing towards a line of products which will create markets that farmers can access. Excess power generates is to be fed into the local grid.   It is clear that this group actively seeks out ICTs for use in their projects however they are in need of technical knowledge, seeking exposure and expertise in order to progress their projects at scale. They are fortunate to access regional support in the form of CARDI, however Eber explained that these increases in production capabilties are tied to the need for funding, of which there are very limited sources in the region.   As a multipurpose cooperative they seek to serve a multitude of members and as such the have also been looking for farming apps.    "We want to give access to young farmers the necessary tools and equipment including ICTs in order to access knowledge resources.We aim to ensure youth are able to enter into the agri sector easily" - Eber   Eber and his team see mobile apps as an ICT they can adopt much faster than the aforementioned plans. He explained that the group has had interactions with an african developer to produce an app that the young farmers may use to assist with planting and harvesting schedules as well as to access international databases.   I explained this was not necessary as there are agri apps made right here in the Caribbean, ready and available for download use now.   Therein lies a major problem; that up to date information is not readily available. To clarify, the information which SOUL needs is accesible given the level of mobile and internet penetration that exists in today's world. However it becomes a matter of where exactly to find this information and is it right for use in the caribbean.   This is where enterprises such as Tech4agri comes in - to consolidate the information and present it in a form that appeals to youth while keeping them up to date and motivated to try new technologies.    Lack of information is a chronic problem that faces the regional agri sector however it is becoming overturned through the increased uptake of ICTs through a variety of service providers    To conclude, I passed on to Eber a link to the AGRINETT project which he was not aware of. These project resulted in a number of mobile apps for the agri sector details in the next study   Case Study 2 The AGRINETT project Location: Trinidad and Tobago   The Department of Computer Science at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus. Embarked on a project to produce several apps and crowdsourced mapping tools for farmers and other stakeholders in the agri sector.    Some apps include the Market Watcher (Agri price) app which provides market information and prices as well as the Agri Maps App which assists with pests, diseases and plath health.   Video: AgriNeTT project Decription Video: Discussion on the merging ICT & Agriculture   The program was well received by the academic community winning several awards even at the international stage as part of the World Summit for International. However on the ground, the app was not initially well received. Many farmers did not use smart phones and were not interested in using the app at all.   As the video discussion above indicates these apps have great potential to assist local farmers in multiple ways however a simple barrier to this was the technology itself, it was not appropriate for the farmers or rather it was created with their limited input. Fortunately, the apps held the interests of children of these farmers who began using the apps making the entire project benficial to entire farming families.    In this video the Agri Diagnose app is explained using cocoa tree example & a young producer from a farming family gives his positive feedback.   In this case the trial project has been success and the apps are free a available for download.

From these cases, lack of knowledge flow and technology suitability seem to some of the major problems preventing SCPI.Best Regards                                                       

Keron Bascombe
Agricultural Blogger and Writer
Blog: tech4agri.com                                               
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Country Representative (Trinidad and Tobago)
Young Professionals' for Agricultural Research for Development (YPARD)
Email: [email protected]
Youth Representative - Local
Steering Committee 2017 - 2020
Global Forum for Agricultural Research (GFAR)

Dear Moses

Thanks for all the information. You're points are well received. Very little of what you have pointed out is beign implemented in the Caribbean. Unfortunately agri extension has fallen and is not as vibrant as it used to be. There are private stakeholders that make the effort to better farmers and other stakeholders but most government based extension officers face severe issues with regards to the lack of resources and technical capapbilities. Much of their work falls on record keeping and promoting business products (i.e. pesticides etc) 

However those private stakeholders that do make a difference focus on developmental initiatives rather traditional extension services. Experiential learning and practical application are key in such work. This is evident in examples by other participants in the forum especially in Africa. Each of the aforementioned areas are important but I'd encourage the though of  local sustainable development as part of the overall strategy. 

All

Apologies for such a later post.

I have read the majority of the responses which are in favor of a national e agriculture plan in agri. However some repsondents pointed out some challenges in implementing such a plan.

Issues faced in the Caribbean region include
-difficulty in adopting new technologies
-severe learning curves
-disinterest by some stakeholders
-severe implementation issues.

There is the CARICOM which has a regional initiative for ICT in agriculture but not only is the intiative far from being properly implemented but nothing is done to solve the aforementionaed problems. Older and Rural farmers do not always see the benefit in ICTs. This certainly does not mean that they are not able but the problem is they are not willing at least not all of them.

Therefore in my opinion any national e-agri strategy should aim to solves these problems as well.

Regards 
keron