Question 2 (opens 27 Nov.) What critical challenges persist in our field, and what is needed to overcome these challenges...

Hi Meg,

very interesting discussion indeed.
First of all, I feel that people are not mixing the device with the people at the other end of the channel. In another words, If people trust an NGO, an dhte ngo is building a mobile service, trust will be here. If it is e.g. a mobile operator which is a brand more than someone, it is more difficult. This explains, imho, why lots of ICT startups are failign short in terms of usage. mostly because farmers are not trusting them.

Then, I'm convinced since quite a long time, that it is far more efficient to rely on existing trust links rather than trying to create new ones. For instance, I'm convinced that it is a mistake for service providers to target farmers. I'm sure (and my own approach/business model) that it is easier to target intermediate structures, would it be ngos or cooperatives, and equip them with services for their consitutencies/members/targets. then these intermediate organizations are in charge of services to their members. This imho leverage existing structure and trust links.

Steph 

Steph, the idea of empowering intermediaries to better serve the user is a great example of what I was envisioning when I referenced connecting people to existing services or "repurposing" systems which are already there.  Thanks for such a well articulated point.

Hello everyone,

I want to start my comment to this post by expressing my appreciation for this opportunity. I count myself among the fortunate youths around the world who are supporting agriculture through ICT.

Now to the point or question raised about challenges in our field. "PROBLEM EXIST EVERYWHERE". I have witness mine and am pretty sure YOU also have yours. I can talk about all the areas mentioned, from technology to gender through to socio-culltural issues and patnerships,capacity development not leaving out financing. Am saying this because all these issues gel very well together to compound our issues presently. 

As a social media reporter and a former assistant administrator for a Freedom Fone owned by RIte 90.1 FM a commercial radio station whose focus has and still remains on aggriculture and social issues here in my home couuntry, I have come to realise how profitable ICT can be in solving environmental, health, cultural, agricultural, socio-eceonomic issues (the list may go on and on). BUT there are problems.

Financing
This is a major problem for my organization. It cost so much to maintain and manage the system I consider to be one of the most effective means of supporting both rural and urban smallholder farmers. All efforts made to secure support has proved futile. The beneficiaries are yearning for the continuious use of the system but there are set-backs that make the smooth running of this almost impossible.

Will discuss the others later.

Eric, thank you for this comment and for homing in on a specific issue. Financing. 

Could you tell us more about why you think realistic financing is not available? 

Are there any possible solutions to this?

This is a tremendously exciting space and those of us in this e-forum and in this ICT4AG/m-Ag/e-Ag community are at the forefront of something big.  We should remember, though, that this space is a very recent phenomena.  As CTA and CGAP and others continue thinking about the future it seems we might be moving into the next generation (2.0) of this space.  It seems that what might be emerging as part of 2.0 is a redefinition of the unit from the farmer to the smallholder farming family.  This has resonance with John Tull's point about business modeling and Stephen Boyera's point about bottom up, locally relevant content.  So far we as a community (by virtue of our interest in ag) have focused on agriculture.  From a user centric design perspective our farmers have households with multiple streams of income (e.g. agriculture, remittances, off-farm labor, handicrafts, etc.) and need for multiple streams of household expenditures (e.g. ag inputs, health, education, utilities, food, etc.).  Meanwhile, the power of the technology is that platforms can easily be designed with multiple functionalities to accomodate the full range of mobile payments and bottom up, locally relevant content needs of smallholder farming families.  If we match the commercial sector's need for volume with the farming family's need for a more powerful value proposition, in need of more youth like Nana Darko, we might see more scale in this space.  

If we accept this premise that we should redefine the unit from the farmer to the smallholder farming family, then it seems a critical challenge for us is to match the power of our brains to the power of the technology and broaden our thinking about how to empower the farmer's family?  If so, then what acronymn would we use to replace the awkward ICT4AG/m-Ag/e-Ag?  

Been a farmer myself and a volunteer as a empowerment coordinator for a women's groups based in kenya.The agriculture sector is dominated by small scale farmers of whom majority are women.The land they farm on is owned by their husbands who are responsible for decision making and the planning of farming activities while women have little authority and have to seek their husband's permission before they commit family resources or make decisions.
Majority of women farmers in the rural areas have joined women's groups which act as a venue for them to voice their concerns,deal with their problems and increase their confidence.They also promote income-generating activities for women as a vital source of household food security.
Majority of these groups are women specific looking at women as victims and ignoring their relations with men.
To close gender gaps in the agriculture sector,these women group should provide a platform for men to be involved.Both women and men should be viewed as the agents and beneficiaries of change.In an african society where land is owned and controlled by men,the involvement of men in these forum will be essential for them to understand women's right in ownership of land.They will also come to appreciate women input in the agriculture sector.

Thank you Zahra for highlighting the important role of women here. Are there specific ways in which ICT initiatives have failed to properly address women and their needs?

Question 3, which opens on Monday, will look further into issues about access and appropriate targeting of ICT services.

Thanks everyone!
So far we have covered a range of challenges from financing and extension of services to sustainability and gender gaps.  Let's dig into these issues even deeper...perhaps there are some overlapping root problems that can be addressed with singular solutions.  
Some issues for futher discussion: partnerships (PPPs, government partners for sustainability)...can this also be part of the solution in terms of sustainability, longevity and connectivity?  It would be great to hear both the pros and cons to partnering for impact in this field.  As well, what of issues in technology and capacity development?
Again, thanks to everyone for your continued involvement and participation!

Yes, the key to successful initiatives lies in making effective partnerships. Take the instance of Public-Private partnership, and mobile agricultural information systems (MAIS) in particular - while the private sector has a completely different objective (business model) of scaling up fast, the public sector likes to trend carefully for obvious reasons. These creates a unhealthy partnership, one that cannot be sustained in the long run.

IMHO, the key challenges lies in

* Clear Policies need to be formulated by governments and the public sector that define the principles for their involvement in the development of any ICT4D initiative, this should take into account of national communication policy or ICT policy. This would necessities the collaboration between agriculture and telecommunication sectors of the governments. This is something that FAO and ITU are working together on.

* Partnership with the private sector has proven to be an established mechanism for the public sector to develop ICT4Ag (or D) sustainably. The roles and responsibilities for the private and public sector has to be clearly defined in each case. In most cases however, the content is provided by one and the delivery mechanism is handled by the other

* Trustworthiness and reliability (as mentioned earlier by Stephane) is of paramount importance to people whose livelihoods depends on actions influenced by what they receive through the imitative. Validity and accuracy of the technical information/content and advice provided have to be thoroughly vetted before being disseminated. This also includes quality control.

* Accountability for quality (correctness and accuracy) should be formally recocognized by the respective partners.

* Multi-modal delivery platforms/methods should be targeted.

Allow me to salute all for the very helpful inputs starting with John's first input and flowing so well to address the issues knowledge, finance and infrastructure/models.

I mentioned the ICT solution that we did for the Tea sector in Kenya. It soon became the solution for the dairy sector and has been the product from where many other innovators have stemmed from. We may have had the problem of extension but with the solution being owned by a smallholder farmer organization, a cooperative that was keen in collectively marketing the produce; it had to address the issues of extension so that production can increase to meet market demands. The production and productivity of farmers rose buoyed by the market demand for fresh milk and with it the revenues too rose. Paying for extension became part of the production chain and the extensionists services were charged by the producer cooperative from the farmers based on the number of visits they made to support a particular farmer. The employer of the extension worker was the farmer rather than the cooperative but the more effective they were, the more farmers called for their services. We believe we have addressed extension that way. Of course mobiles facilitate reaching of an effective extension worker as they can be called wherever they may be on duty to the next location and backed with a motor bike, they are able to traverse rural terrains with ease. The programme of support/extension was popularized through radio FM stations in local vernacular with call-ins for farmers to tell their problem and those that have effectively been supported telling their story.

The capture of the challenges that effective extension workers have addressed and how they have addressed the challenges is not quite captured, and hence the knowledge generation has been poor, much as it may be desirable to document and have it on a digital platform to help those others that may need to create employment in the extension line. The existence of an online platform for sharing of experiences too has been lacking and the training of the extension people on such a platform is still expected to come in our next phase of working with farmers. To that extent, content on extension needs to be gathered more specifically and in focused way. The farmer field schools that generate a lot of knowledge as they may be patronized by input producers and manufacturers also fails to be captured in a way that can be shared across the board.

What therefore has emerged is that we need a universal or what we call 'open' platform for sharing knowledge by stakeholders so that it keeps growing and which can become the reference point for those in radio calls to become extensionists.

The Question: Can foundations that fund agricultural ICTs come with their heavy pockets to fund a cloud driven platform that can address this, not owned by a research initiative that wants credit for itself?

Arising from the foregoing is the challenge of effort duplicity. AS John did indicate in the health sector, duplication is a challenge. Copying of technologies and branding the solution differently is another. We had one 'very innovative' initiative/organization copying our hardware, taking it to Greece for fabrication then coming back to sell it to clients even when they did not have the infrastructure to support the hardware. The consequences are borne by the farmer when their technology fails.

With so much ubiquity in the availability of the internet through mobile and portable devices, there definitely should be a platform of for universal access of knowledge rather and processes rather than the duplicity....who will be the first development financier/actor to bell the cat?

Mobile solutions seem to be identified as the drivers of what is commonly referred to as innovation. The user end is saturated with apps that are not synchronized and whose logic is not grounded on operational knowledge. There is need for the innovators to get a dose of knowledge from the grassroots actors. This unfortunately cannot be copied and has to be done collaboratively. Who will create a forum of knowledge sharing so that tech savvy youths and the practitioners can see themselves as value chain actors who have space for non-competition but cooperation in a win-win perspective?

Once the market drives demand and pays for the produce to be delivered to them in a given order/form, then the other layers of the chain will respond. Our solutions/apps are too supply-driven for the farmer. A bottom up model in the knowledge and process generation that links with the market to guide it is what imho will help us.