E-Agriculture

Question 1: ICTs for collecting agricultural, socio-economic, or M&E data (Open 11 June)

Question 1: ICTs for collecting agricultural, socio-economic, or M&E data (Open 11 June)

 Question 1: Collecting data the conventional way (through paper and pen) is time-consuming, costly, and difficult to manage. However, digitization and increases in connectivity have created opportunities to improve these processes.

What types of ICT applications or devices are available for collecting agricultural, socio-economic, or M&E data in remote locations? How can you use them?

 

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Laura Walker Hudson
Laura Walker HudsonFrontlineSMSKenya

 Hello Kantiza,

I think you raise an excellent point that many of the higher-cost or more complex data collection tools available are targeted more at researchers and professionals than at smallholder farmers or stakeholders themselves. One of our motivations at FrontlineSMS is to enable as many people as possible to use technology to 'have a say', for as low a cost in money and complexity as possble. The examples that Amy mentioned earlier in this forum, on radio programs that give farming advice to any farmer that sends an SMS with a problem or question, may not be the kind of structured data collection that researchers need to be able to chart or analyze statistically, but, as Amy's example about diagnosing Newcastle Disease in chickens shows, it can still have real results for communities.

Antoine Kantiza
Antoine KantizaPromotion de l'Education à Distance/Promotion of Education and Learning in Distance, PLEAD in short Burundi
I have been pleased to hear Laura Walker Hudson saying that FrontlineSMS is providing an opportunity to the deep rural community ‘to have a say’ in order to share experiences instead of creating and building another new database for experts  and further staffs preoccupied by plausible future purpose.
 I think that FronlineSMS is winning the first challenge of its easy exploitation by the common possessor of mobile phone and it is a wonderful result in honor of the creator of the software; the second step is to know if the software works really despite the problem of downloading as quoted by Rabiu and the third step is to monitor if that opportunity has been taken by the beneficiaries, I wonder if the great number of farmers should be aware of this tool of communication and I guess that another tool of communication like radio should be used to stimulate and train farmers in using FrontlineSMS. I have read the post of Amy O Donnell entitled ‘Mobile in Hybrid with other communication tools’ and first of all, I appreciated the word “hybrid”, it is obvious that the progress of creativity has been achieved in many fields when two or more gears have been allied and I add also that ‘a context is king’ to mean that the radio has succeeded in many areas of Africa like Burundi country or in any other part of world where there is predominance of oral tradition and I expect that in the complement of  the radio program which could be missed by listeners, the mobile phone should improve the transmission of fair and useful written messages between African farmers and I wish for Barzaradio to go ahead as I am among its supporters because I was participant in Farm Radio International Network when the idea of creating Barzaradio was launched.
Prof Antoine KANTIZA, Master Uticef,-
E-mail: [email protected] or
Laura Walker Hudson
Laura Walker HudsonFrontlineSMSKenya

Sorry about the double posting.

Moses Owiny
Moses OwinyWomen of Uganda Network (WOUGNET)Uganda

Apart from the text Messaging Systems which may be a little bit less costly and appropriate for rural communities for data collection,what other cheaper tools are their for organisations wanting to capture data from the field in rural communities. I have seen many posts about the Ipods, Iphones and ODK systems etc, how cheap and relevant are these tools and what kind of data do they capture anyway?.

I still have not adequately understood what appropriate tools are used to capture data in remote locations,how and what kind of data. Somebody should help me reply to this post.

Moses

Women of Uganda Network

Kiringai Kamau
Kiringai KamauVACID AfricaKenya

We are not so WiFi ourselves but are bluetooth!

My name is Kiringai Kamau from Kenya. I promote the integration of ICTs to
agriculture in Eastern Africa. I have been working mainly in the tea and
dairy sectors to capture data in the field using rechargeable batteries
into digital weighing scales that we have been developing and upgrading
through a collaboration with an India based company, Applied Data Logix.

Our technologies are available at www.octagon.co.ke and we create value
chain linked efforts through community aggregation centres that are based
in farmer organized produce centres. I had to go back to school and change
my area of focus from ICT to agriculture, with a focus on agricultural
extension through formation of collectives.

The data is captured using digital scales that are initially fed with
farmer records at the farmer collective's computer. Farmer records only
contain names and their numbers, nothing on produce data. When the
collection process starts the scale weighs the produce, the weigh it
captured and stored on the scale, display of the weighment is displayed on
a remote display, a receipt is printed for farmer record---which is not
necessary but is needed to create confidence, the scale is delivered to the
office to download the data, which could be relayed to the collective
action's computers/servers on GPRS/GSM, but due to infrastructure
constraints in WiMax communication we provide for the duo benefit of using
the data download from the scale. The data is aggregated per month and
payment done in like manner.

It creates confidence, promotes creation of collectives and investment
among smallholder farmers. We have seen farmers who never had an income
earn as much as $200 a month and the direct employment generation at
the particularly collective now stands at 600 with an MBA as a manager of
the collective. We now promote the use of the technology in all sectors and
are now taking its operations to any field data capture work.

Our software to manage the data from the scales has now evolved to become
an ERP (almost)...

The foregoing can be used in any M&E set-up and can be integrated into any
cloud solution, not necessarily onto our own emerging ERP.

We are not spending more time creating farmer organization and training
programmes on the same as you can see at
http://rural-agriculture.wikispaces.com

Join us and create an Aquaculture, Value Addition, Agribusiness and
Knowledge (AVAAK) Centre for which we are busy building a community of
practise around what people are doing.

You are invited to be part of our growing network...

On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 3:00 PM, <[email protected].org> wrote:

> **
>
> Write above this line to reply|Escriba sobre esta línea para
> responder|Pour répondre écrivez au-dessus de cette ligne
> Dear | Estimado(a) | Cher/Chère: kiringai
>
>
> • New comment *|* Nuevo comentario *|* Nouveau commentaire: *Cost
> effectivenessof these Data Collections Systems_WOUGNET*
>
> • Published on *| *Publicado el *|* Publié le: *18/06/2012 - 10:17*
>
> • *mowiny *wrote *| *escribió *|* a écrit:
>
> * *
>
> *Apart from the text Messaging Systems which may be a little bit less
> costly and appropriate for rural communities for data collection,what other
> cheaper tools are their for organisations wanting to capture data from the
> field in rural communities. I have seen many posts about the Ipods, Iphones
> and ODK systems etc, how cheap and relevant are these tools and what kind
> of data do they capture anyway?.*
> *
>
> I still have not adequately understood what appropriate tools are used to
> capture data in remote locations,how and what kind of data. Somebody should
> help me reply to this post.
>
> Moses
>
> Women of Uganda Network
>
> *
>
> • Read more *|* Leer más *| *Lire la suite:
> http://www.e-agriculture.org/forumtopics/question-1-icts-collecting-agri...
>
>
>
>
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--
_____________________________________________________________________
Kiringai Kamau
VACID Africa Institute - A Cisco Entrepreneur Institute Training Center
Institute Programme Manager, Knowledge Specialist & Value Chain Analyst
PO Box 35046 00200
Nairobi-Kenya
Tel: +25420-2719733/2728708
Fax: +25420-2724389
Cell: +254-722800986/733375505
Websites:www.vacidafrica.or.ke,www.kenyaagriculture.or.ke,
www.kenyagateway.or.ke

Kiringai Kamau
Kiringai KamauVACID AfricaKenya

We are not so WiFi ourselves but are bluetooth!<div></div><div>My name is Kiringai Kamau from Kenya. I promote the integration of ICTs to agriculture in Eastern Africa. I have been working mainly in the tea and dairy sectors to capture data in the field using rechargeable batteries into digital weighing scales that we have been developing and upgrading through a collaboration with an India based company, Applied Data Logix.<div>
<br></div><div>Our technologies are available at <a href="http://www.octagon.co.ke">www.octagon.co.ke</a> and we create value chain linked efforts through community aggregation centres that are based in farmer organized produce centres. I had to go back to school and change my area of focus from ICT to agriculture, with a focus on agricultural extension through formation of collectives.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The data is captured using digital scales that are initially fed with farmer records at the farmer collective&#39;s computer. Farmer records only contain names and their numbers, nothing on produce data. When the collection process starts the scale weighs the produce, the weigh it captured and stored on the scale, display of the weighment is displayed on a remote display, a receipt is printed for farmer record---which is not necessary but is needed to create confidence, the scale is delivered to the office to download the data, which could be relayed to the collective action&#39;s computers/servers on GPRS/GSM, but due to infrastructure constraints in WiMax communication we provide for the duo benefit of using the data download from the scale. The data is aggregated per month and payment done in like manner. </div>
<div><br></div><div>It creates confidence, promotes creation of collectives and investment among smallholder farmers. We have seen farmers who never had an income earn as much as $200 a month and the direct employment generation at the particularly collective now stands at 600 with an MBA as a manager of the collective. We now promote the use of the technology in all sectors and are now taking its operations to any field data capture work.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Our software to manage the data from the scales has now evolved to become an ERP (almost)...</div><div><br></div><div>The foregoing can be used in any M&amp;E set-up and can be integrated into any cloud solution, not necessarily onto our own emerging ERP.</div>
<div><br></div><div>We are not spending more time creating farmer organization and training programmes on the same as you can see at <a href="http://rural-agriculture.wikispaces.com">http://rural-agriculture.wikisp...
<div><br></div><div>Join us and create an Aquaculture, Value Addition, Agribusiness and Knowledge (AVAAK) Centre for which we are busy building a community of practise around what people are doing.</div><div><br></div><div>
You are invited to be part of our growing network...<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon,

Antoine Kantiza
Antoine KantizaPromotion de l'Education à Distance/Promotion of Education and Learning in Distance, PLEAD in short Burundi
I have been pleased to hear Laura Walker Hudson saying that FrontlineSMS  is providing an opportunity to the deep rural community ‘to have a say’ in order to share experiences instead of creating and building another new database for experts  and further staffs preoccupied by plausible future purpose.
 I think that FronlineSMS is winning the first challenge of its easy exploitation by the common possessor of mobile phone and it is a wonderful result in honor of the creator of the software; the second step is to know if the software works really despite the problem of downloading as quoted by Rabiu and the third step is to monitor if that opportunity has been taken by the beneficiaries, I wonder if the great number of farmers should be aware of this tool of communication and I guess that another tool of communication like radio should be used to stimulate and train farmers in using FrontlineSMS.  I have read the post of Amy O Donnell entitled ‘ Mobile in Hybrid with other communication tools’ and first of all, I appreciated the word “hybrid”, it is obvious that the progress of creativity has been achieved in many fields when two or more gears have been allied and I add also that ‘a context  is king’ to mean that the radio has succeeded in many areas of Africa like Burundi country or in any other part of world where there is predominance of oral tradition and I expect that in the complement of the radio program which could be missed by listeners, the mobile phone should improve the transmission of fair and useful written messages between African farmers and I wish for Barzaradio to go ahead as I am among its supporters because I was participant in Farm Radio International Network when the idea of creating Barzaradio was launched.
Prof Antoine KANTIZA, Master Uticef,-
E-mail: [email protected] or
Antoine Kantiza
Antoine KantizaPromotion de l'Education à Distance/Promotion of Education and Learning in Distance, PLEAD in short Burundi
I think that I could add some quantitative details in my latest post but it takes long to collect; to analyse and to validate quantitative data before publishing it. In fact, such quantitative data could be collected in Burundi or any other developing country with the support of projects focused on the collection, treatment and validation of quantitative data of rural community and agriculture matters.
I thank for Ehud Gelb for his link which shows the involvement of ICT in the agriculture issues
I remember to have posted a comment “ ICT not to waste time but for taking right decisions” below the insight posted by Ehud Gelb in the question entitled :”What is the most effective way to measure the impact of ICT for development (ICT 4D) initiatives” which is still available in the forum mentioned by the link http://www.e-agriculture.org/forums/forum-archive/forum-challenges-and-opportunities-capturing-impact-ict-initiatives-agriculture
I look forward to share further knowhow in ICT for development.
Prof Antoine KANTIZA, Master UTICEF,-
E-mail :[email protected] or

I'm probably quite late in this discussion. As a developer and manager, I have a few concerns and really thought we can discuss this further:

I love the work being done on the mHealth front, need to know:

  1. How we can get some of the goodies being built up on mHealth into Agriculture).
  2. What are the challenges being faced?
  3. How can developers combine forces to harness opportunities that can be brought into agriculture?