Question 2: What are the barriers to reaching scale with mobile agriculture information services and...

1. When we think of intermediaries, somehow we start imagining them as interpreters of information, while they can actually play a much larger role. As interpreter of information (the so called knowledge workers) no viable business model can evolve (One World South Asia-Lifeline, is a case in point). However, as Information brokers, buying and selling information at farm gate, there is a possibility of evolution of a sustainable business case. Question is who will buy what information and at what price and in which delivery model. There is no readymade answer, but according to me it is worth investigating this new business concept, as information brokerage is fast growing as a business in non-agriculture segments for example while one searches Google, in the back end there is a business model of advertising revenue.

2.  Another point which comes up from the discussion is reduction/removal of layers of intermediaries for information reach the target user. I fully agree with that and CABI has already taken up this as new focus area of research through the Direct2Farm project, which key objective is enabling farmers to seek and source information, tailor-made to their individual need, at any time in any form/format. This is why the project is called Direct2Farm, which means we do not see the role of intermediaries as interpreters of information to the farmers. However, this needs significant innovation in terms of technology and user interfaces, considering that the farmers have simple questions which need highly sophisticated scientific knowledge to resolve. Today very few technology organizations are working on practical farmer centric applications (mobile applications to be specific) and this is according to me one key bottle neck.

3. The third issue is uptake by users (farmers). Even if the information reaches the farmers, how many of them are ready to buy them? Uptake is one key consideration factor which in my experience keeps MNO-s apprehensive about investing in mobile agriculture information VAS. There are several aspects of this. Unlike entertainment VAS, utility VAS like agriculture information may not be purchased by user just simply because it is available. One of the key apprehension which farmers have is about quality of information (accuracy, effectively and trustworthiness of information provider). Agriculture information is dispersed amongst various institutions with completely different set of operation principles and organizational set up. Hence it is very difficult to establish a quality standard, and in reality lot of time information sent to farmers are not at all correct or applicable. Farmers only need actionable information to solve their problem and they are not interested in general knowledge. Agri-information service providers must keep that in mind if they really want to achieve scale of their services.

4. Even when there is information, which farmers really want to buy, there is issue of a sustainable business model to sell them. Rural ARPU is much lower than urban ARPU while agro-information subscription will always be costlier than a caller tune. So even if farmers are ready to pay, MNO-s cannot sell them the service if the farmers do not have enough talk-time available with them. In India, “life-time free SIM cards” enables a subscriber to keep on receiving calls while there is no talk-time available. This is more so in case of rural customers and this is one of the major reason for high churn out of rural utility VAS customers. Here a talk-time based model like IKSL probably can work better.

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5. Lastly according to me, to reach scale in a successful way, the service provider should be able to increase serviceability without matching investment in infrastructure (use of technology for increasing service efficiency). Intelligent applications and new technologies (e.g. Cloud computing, inference engines, iconic SMS-s etc) will play critical role in that.

Simultaneously, agri-info service providers and MNO-s should also look for innovative infomediary models, to be attractive enough for rural youths as business. This will in time may evolve as a major non-conventional marketing channel for MNO-s which will ensure that agro-info services will get enough investment commitment from MNO-s to build and grow their business.    

I want to react on the information broker concept. I understand the value, i understand the concept, but i slightly disagree on it in fact.

First of all, there are lots of other issues related to intermediaries that i didn't mention. One we are experiencing in Mali: 100% of the people who have the ability to be trained to become intermediaries are male because they usually had the opportunity to have a better education. 83% of the producers we are working with are female. This is a major gender issue.

Second point, the availability of and dynamism of the intermediary is also a key dimension. Some are very excited, some are seeing that as a very minor job and therefore are not very dynamic and available, severly impacting the people they are supposed to serve. This is life, and this is happening. If you want the intermediary to be paid fulltime, then again you cannot make your system sustainable (same issue as human-driven call center).

Finally, it is the aspiration of all people to become independent, particularly in access to information that are critical for their life and their income.

I visited grameen CKW in 2009, and had discussion with farmers. in the two villages we visited, all farmers always said that they would like to get the same phone as the CKW (believing that the trick is in the phone, and not realizing they would not be able ot use it). I think this is a normal human behaviour. Being the oracle for information is a position of power, and all humans aspire to access himself directly the information he needs. From a fairness perspective, and given that today there are technologies that make this dream possible, it is critical to go in that direction.

Steph 

Not wanting to be overly simplistic, but could we then say - all other issues held fixed - that this human desire to be independent in information access bodes well for these information services reaching a sustainable scale?

Literacy situation act as a barrier to communicating new ideas to farmers and also because most farmers have lower level of education.The mobile operator can help by giving the mesages in the languages that can be understood by the farmers.

Bernard Bett

Hello to everybody and many thanks to GSMA and to FAO/e-Agriculture for organising and hosting this forum.

To sum up, on the basis  of the IKSL experience, I see in future a great potential for the use of mobile to deliver advisory services at a scale to farmers. Yet, any similar approach from both private sector and public sector  aimed at mainstremaing m-services in agriculture will have to find acceptable trades off with the other two remaning factors of the framework. 

P. Ficarelli,

You have posted an interesting analysis. I have a few points to make in this regard.
To improve the effectiveness of its services, IKSL promotes Communities / Groups with members having a common interest,  say a common crop or a common livelihood.  This provides an opportunity to extend focused services to the members  of the Community. The voice messages, support on helpline and other programmes are customized/ tailored to address the common/ collective interests of the community. In these initiatives, often, IKSL partners with NGOs , Self Help Groups (SHGs), Cooperatives, Institutions who have interest relevant to the group. Intensive engagement with the participants is a major feature of this approach.

While micro nature of ‘a community’ may not yield scale, the underlying approach is to cluster the existing scale into ‘communities’ for quality content. In this process the focus is to view  the farmers as groups with homogeneous needs. While forming communities, our major emphasis is on finding a collaborating partner - NGO, institution, organisation with stake / commitment to the Community with common interests. This approach enables obtaining feedback on the usefulness of the services - preferably in a participatory environment. This strategy could be slow in building capacity but very well addresses all the ‘tensions’ outlined in the Post.

 Hello Everyone, I believe the use of SMS varies with regions. In Uganda SMS is widely used even in the rural areas and some farmers access market information which they use to make informed decisions. What has made a difference in Uganda is that farmers are encouraged to get organized in groups and in most cases at least the leader of the group is able to interpret messages for those that are not literate. 

We operate a market information platform where we share market information for major markets in Uganda. What happens is that the farmers send us prices in their regions and they access prices from other markets. By providing us with prices from their regions, they are able to compare with prices from other places. Sending prices on our platform is free but accessing the information is a cost to the user. In this way we are able to get some revenue which we use to incentivise those who send us messages. For instance we offer prizes to those who are consistent and provide accurate information.

What about Voice?

We are also operating a Voice Messaging Service which we are using to inform/sensitize farmers on key issues across the value chain. I must say operating a Voice Messaging Service is not cheap. And the cost of each call is far higher than text SMS. However, the impact of a Voice message is so enormous. The model we are currently using runs like this, the Ministry of NGO working with farmer group records a message informing farmers say of an disease outbreak, when to plant, when to apply herbicites etc. The service is also used to conduct survey and sometimes find out whether farmers understood a particular sensitization campaign. Responses from farmers can only be closed ended. So they choose among the options provided. The beauty with this system unlike SMS is that calls can be made in any language. Secondly the system provides call logs for every concluded campaign which shows the date, time and options the recipients chose. Messages can be replayed. The beauty with our service is that is can even call outside Uganda but international rates apply. We however negotiate based on volume.

We are now moving towards enabling farmers to query the system and recieve responses. This will take a while but we shall get there. Because we operate as a business, we believe farmers can part with a modest fee to access information. Farmers organized in groups tend be more active than individual rural farmers. That is why farming in Uganda especially in rural areas is done in groups.

@bruce: your case is interesting. You are saying that in Uganda use of SMS by farmers is not a problem. I'm quite surprised. What I've seen in rural areas, and particularly discussing with grameen foundation applab people, they have developed their CKW concept (community Knowledge Workers) specifically to adress the issue of sms usage.

Are you working in a special district ? or perhaps you could related your work with grameen, the difference and commonalities in approach ?

thanks

Steph

Yes, farmers widely use SMS in Uganda. The question should be, what do they use sms for. Can farmers read technical information in English using sms, some but not all.  I mentioned that the trick behind working in groups is that at least one member or the head is learned enough to interpret messages for the entire group. I know Grameen and their CKW program. The CKW use Android phones which are expensive and I do not think the farmer would even be interested in that. Secondly, they need internet to access the technical information provided on the Android phones. That is why farmers can only access this information throught the CKWs who are incentivised to provide this service. That is why text SMS is still widely used because it works with any ordinary phone and does not require internet access. I think USSD will be the next step in providing more information to farmers using ordinary phones because its cheaper than normal text SMS.

The question I always ask myself with the Grameen model is that if Grameen pulls out, will the CKWs maintain their support for the farmers? The answer is NO because am very certian that they cannot afford monthly internet connection and I doubt if they can do their work without an incentive.

That is why every activity that we carry out with farmers is accompaied by a business model for sustainability purposes.