Question 2 (opens 19 Sept.)
What factors make ICT-based advisory services for smallholders sustainable?
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This is where favorable policies and an enabling environment have to be fostered, in order to facilitate the creation and use of a sustainable ICT-based advisory service. There are many examples of ICT-based interventions in agriculture, health, education and rural livelihoods related projects in Asia. Yet how many of these have moved from pilot phase to a fully functional sustainable initiative? We know of very, very few.
However, the IKSL initiative in India is clearly an example of a successful partnership, which mFarmer has documented as a case study. IKSL is a joint collaboration between the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd (IFFCO), the largest farmer cooperative in India and Airtel, a mobile network operator.
The importance of public-private partnerships in such initiatives cannot be stressed enough.
Assuming Sustainability is the capacity to endure after donor/grant funds have run out; how many small holder ICT interventions have eventually succeeded as stand alone initiatives? I will say couple of them - if any. How long has it taken them to become sustainable? – this will help us learn how to endure
I am skeptical about the sustainability of supply provision of services because how many people will pay for something they have not asked for or do not need? Most supply driven interventions I have come across send out content/services to masses because they want to make a good report at the end of the day. Yet in reality, that content benefits only a handful. I think there’s need to focus on segmenting who gets what.
In my view what partly hinders agricultural ICT interventions is adoption by smallholder farmers. Most of the applications are designed without putting into consideration the local context and the ability of smallholder farmers to adopt the technology.
Most of the ideas are “wow”!! in workshops and meetings and yet we know that they cannot work right back on the ground. Or if they work, they are short lived.
Take an example, farmers can determine whether what they are buying is genuine or fake. And they authenticate using their mobile phone (any basic phone, no need to purchase a smart phone). The method is similar to loading airtime which they are very familiar with. They pay for the authentication message sent. The idea behind this is, it’s better to pay an extra fee and be sure of what you are buying than buy a fake and it never works – you lose money, time, trust and ……...
I support partnerships as a lead to sustainability but also support business models embedded in agricultural ICT interventions.
What do you think?
Bruce.. I agree with you on many points but think you are confusing "demand" and "delivery." There is a demand for agriculture content but we expect our audience to pull this content from us. We do not mass broadcast. But it is unfortunate that most donor driven projects need to demonstrate uptake or lose their funding. Yes, a dependency on donor funding has forged a double-edged sword.
ICT projects will be sustainable when
the Information is authenticated and need based
when there will be electricity all the time
when there are local infrastructures are available
when there is no band width problems
When our government adopts unique ict policy and
when all our farmers are literate and are able to take up the project ahead....
The sustainability in using ICT for agriculture innovation pro smallholder implies that incomes driven from agriculture or livestock do not regularly dropped, so, it is supposed that a smallholder makes profit each harvest season. nevertheless, in the normal case,the farming activities do not drain profits for smallholders of developing countries for many well known reasons such as the unforeseeable weather; the lack of good seeds,medicines or land fertilizers;the availability of basic infrastructure like good quality of roads and markets in close proximity of the smallholder disseminated in the inner of developing countries.
It is obvious that the concept “smallholder sustainable” in the appropriation of ICT devices, means somewhere that the small farmer is self-sufficient in long term, he must be able to buy an accurate information related to the agriculture innovation without free external support like the toll-free or the famous Digital Green Indian’s project.
Nowadays, the ICT tools are advantageous to the challenger smallholders http://www.e-agriculture.org/forumtopics/question-12-other-challenges and the access on ICT devices doesn’t lead necessary to the autonomous of smallholder particularly in the Africa area which is still in the darkness even if the African inhabitants have rushed in speed for using ICT tools where among them, the radio broadcasting is the most used to acquire the latest agriculture information throughout African smallholders.
I think that in short term, the problem of darkness will be solved for the ICT tools in the Africa which is exploiting more and more its potentiality of solar energy, for example the Econet mobile phone company operating in Burundi has launched in the beginning of the third week of September 2012, a portable solar lantern called “Econet solar” for providing light and for charging in energy the mobile phones for a cost of almost sixty US dollars which is nothing for many storekeepers living in rural area of Burundi but which is still a big amount for a small farmer living in the same area http://solarenergy.einnews.com/country/burundi. It is manifest that in fine, the availability of the cheaper solar energy is a new opportunity for the raising of global development in rural area of Burundi.
By the way, if the access of ICT devices for all smallholders of Africa should be solved in the upcoming days with the plausible integration of solar energy supply incorporated directly in the mobile phones, another problem could happen in selecting relevant information because it is not easy to get right information in the middle of a tank full of useful information like Internet even for well educated person, it means that mediators similar to those seen in Digital Green Model are needed for supporting in seeking the right information and in improving production within those ICT based agriculture innovation. I wonder who will continue to pay the needed free mediators in the competitive economic. May be that the farming sector remains outside of the real economic in some developing countries and if so, the states and the qualitative organizations focused on fighting the hunger and the reduce of poverty in the developing countries have again a long pathway of supporting the “smallholder sustainable” located particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Prof Antoine Kantiza, Master Uticef,-
E-mail:[email protected] or [email protected]
FAO co-organized a regional consultation in 2012 that brought together senior officials from agricultural ministries of 12 countries in Asia, representatives of the private sector, and experts in Mobile Agriculture Information Services (MAIS). The main objective of the meeting was to explore the role of public sector in delivering MAIS and to examine the factors affecting sustainability based on examples from the region. In summary, the main findings that emerged were:
Dear Members,
I work for The Department for International Development (DFID) and I am also a postgraduate student at Birkbeck, University of London, where I am completing a MSc. in International Business and Development. You can find out more about me here: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/marsha-castello/22/73/91a
I am extremely interested in the near ubiquity of mobile phones, the massive growth of mobile networks in developing countries and the huge potential this has in closing information gaps between the developing world and the developed world and thus closing the agricultural productivity gap between these two spheres.
To this end, I am currently writing my dissertation on the socio-economic impact of mobile phones on smallholder farmers. As Agricultural, Development and ICT professionals and/ or users of mobile agricultural information services I would like to invite you to participate in a very short online survey that should take no longer than 5 minutes to complete:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NHMZTT5
All responses will remain anonymous and will be used for no other purpose than to either prove or disprove the hypothesis generated by my dissertation as arrived at by a comprehensive review of the literature on mobiles for development.
Please share with your networks,
You can also connect with me on twitter @mc37077442 or @m4dsurvey
Thank you
Kind regards
Virtual Extension and Research Communication Network (VERCON) was established in 2002 and an institution-based communication network in Egypt (www.vercon.sci.eg ). The main feature to solve the problems of high technology, connection costs, and farmer illiteracy was to support extension centers with computers connected to the internet, while extension agents help farmers using the network components.
Number of extension centers connected to VERCON in July 2007 reached 96 centers in 18 governorates (out of 26 governorates in Egypt). Agricultural administrations in the governorates and its extension centers are connected to 30 specific research stations for field crops, horticulture and animal production working under 8 regional research stations, as will the connections with the central level like: the central administration for agricultural extension, central administration for research and experimental stations, economic sector, and all related research institutes.
VERCON includes:
Percentages of users rated to: 76.1% Male, 12.6% Female, 4.9% National and international organizations and 6.4% Undefined. Users professions were: 43.1% Researcher, 34% Extensionists (including those with direct contact with farmers), 9.4% Farmers (free directly connected), and 13.5% of other categories.
Users affiliation were: 18.8% from Research institutions, 5% from the Central laboratory for agricultural expert systems, 4% Universities, 26.2% from Extension institutions, 0.8% other Governmental entities, 5% NGOs and private sector, 34.1% Individuals, 2.5% International institutions, and 3.5% Undefined.
In 2005 the network was expanded to be Rural and Agricultural Development Communication Network (RADCON), and more systems were added: Women's corner System, Youth System, Clean Environment System, Market Information System, and NGO system (www.radcon.sci.eg ).
Both networks are functioning, but faced some difficulties that hindered their work like:
This innovation was very successful that it was replicated in other Asian ad African countries advocated by FAO (http://km.fao.org/vercon/).
More details about RADCON as a community-based communication can be found in "http://km.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/vercon/pdf/English/Radcon_-_web_ve... (http://km.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/vercon/pdf/English/Radcon_-_web_version.pdf)
Nearly last one decade, large number of ICT innovations were deployed for facilitationg agro-advisory services for small holders in many developing countries, including India.....however, only few projects were scaled-up and sustined (in this forum Ben indicated that 10% of projects only reach to the sustainable stage, but in India this percentage (approximately) may be 3-5%....
Why ICT initiatives are un-sustinable and how we can make ICT advisory services become sustainable?
1. Most of the ICT projects are taken-up as an academic research projects/ pilots (with large investments). After the experimentation, there is no clear eveidence/ impact results to support for large scale deployments and also for the Government/ donor support.
2. Users are unwilling to Pay: Few ressearch studies in India indiacted that farmers (especially small and marginal land holding farmers) are unwilling to pay (even nominal fee) for agro-advisory services. This also related to the farmers' perception that agricultural advisory services are part of the welfare activities of the state, and thus should be provided free of charge.
3.Most ICT initiatives facilitated ONLY Information that too small part of agricultural information chain: ICT projects projects will not be sustainable if they only focus on providing information about agricultural practice. Provision needs to be more holistic in two ways. First, the project must find a way to deliver all the resources necessary to turn information into agricultural action. This means the provision of money, labour, technology, motivation, and support. Even if not directly delivered by the project, these resources must be available or the information will remain unused. Second, the project must work across the supply chain: not just focused on agricultural processes but on backward linkages to inputs (farm machinery, fertiliser, seeds) and on forward linkages to outputs (postharvest technologies, and agricultural markets).
4. Integration of Pluralistic actorts: For sutainabilty and successful scaling-up of the ICT projects for small holder farmers, integration of the public and private knowledge and other service providers (Agriculture based NGOs, farm input dealers, agribusiness firms etc.,) in the agriculture sector creates synergy and complementary effect in disseminating agro-advisory services through ICT initaitives..
-R. Saravanan
Dear All
Greeting from Bangladesh. I have been following the lively discussions and I think not its time I add something to it.
There is a general understanding or conception that ICT based advisory services are not sustainable, which is not necessarily be true. I am working with ICT based advisory services for micro, small & medium enterprises and I found that there are certain factors that need to be understood. Only after that it is possible to make them sustainable which we have did.
First of all, it’s the ecosystem that needs to be understood. A standalone service is not going to be sustainable. How the service is developed, who is developing, who is providing and who is benefitting from the service are the crucial questions. For making a service sustainable we need to make sure that the right organizations doing the right thing for the right incentive. Sustainability can come from private sector led business model or government led service model or from a collaboration.
Secondly the regulation scenario, the government should play a role to facilitate competition and regulate the services. The focus should not be on controlling or giving extra mileage to the state run weak service providers. A proper policy framework and conducive environment is needed.
And finally the engagement of private sector. It is absolutely necessary to make private sector understand the benefit and the business of such services. Once private sector can see that there is business in it they would invest and things would move fast.
I have experienced working with all these factors that it’s a combination and balancing of the right strategy. And I can share also how addressing one issue lead us to find another because of these key factors.
From my experience of developing different ICT based services in Bangladesh I have found that these are the crucial factors for sustainability. There is a case being prepared by The Springfield Centre on Agriculture & ICT: benefitting the poor. That case would shed light on these factors too. Once the case is published I will be sharing in this forum.
Thanks and regards
Asad