Question 1: Market Information - users of mobile technology

FYI- I am posting my post in two parts, but they are all part of the same comment thread.

I have spent the past year working on the ICT sourcebook with the World Bank and am delighted to see pertinent issues raised in regards to the "how". Market-- and as Shaun said, price--information is certainly one of the most, if not the most, critical and up-and-coming agriculture service provided through mobile phones. The problem that we all seem to agree on--making market information services sustainable and accurate--appears to be the main challenge. It seems that many of the projects we hear about are "boutique" pilot studies... While indeed useful to gain information on what works and what doesn't, scaling is a hurdle that only a few seem to be clearing.

I think Judy's point and her comment about USAID's is useful. Focusing on farmers' associations increases demand for services and builds up a critical mass, making the service more appealing for private and public sector involvement/investment.

I also agree with Ben's point in that switching from donor-led initiatives to business-oriented often does not work. Farmers may be hesitant (or simply unable) to pay for services after they've been subsidized for some time. However, if we examine the economics of farmers' situations and attempt to offer a service that increases their profits, they have more incentives to pay for them. Tiered payment systems may work in areas where farmers have varying "ability to pay" such as different levels of income, distance to markets, and types of production.

Shahroz's experience is very interesting, particularly in regards to credibility and external challenges like logistics (which will be discussed further in the forum next week). Grahame points out in his module that governments--for a variety of reasons--often fail to provide accurate and up-to-date marketing services. Coming from a governance perspective, this makes sense. Financial resources are few, capacity is low, and these types of services require fast and sustained action. Developing countries with large rural populations cannot easily agglomerate such diverse data and information and then disseminate it on a large platform that a wide variety of actors can access... That said, I wonder if the public sector should try to decentralize (with adequate oversight) some of the concerted efforts to provide this information; we should also perhaps explore what types of incentives are needed (and perhaps missing) to encourage improved provision. I find it interesting that companies also find it difficult to provide useful price services to farmers in some cases.

I would love to hear more from Rantej (and others in the private sector) on this matter, particularly because many development organizations/partners are asking about PPPs and how to provide cost-effective market info services in partnership with mobile operators and the like. What steps are needed to accurately provide market information? How can development organizations encourage private investors to provide agriculture services to the poor? What are the main challenges when the private and public sector collaborate in these initiatives? What are the enabling areas that development partners can and should be focusing on in order to make these services (whether private or publically provided) more widely accessible and useful to farmers? It seems that many want to support these efforts but the paths of action are covered in some fog!

As a consultant with the Gender and Rural Development team at the World Bank, I wanted to post a response to the main thread which also addresses many of the very pointed and important components already raised by other participants while including the input of gender mainstreaming.  I think this is a direct link to Ben's call for viable, sustainable and scalable intiatives.  If providing technologies to small holders is difficult in general, it is even more so in the case of rural women, who often lack access to basic technolgies such as wheelbarrows, let alone more advanced electronics.  There is a basic rub here in that often times those who stand to benefit the most (e.g. overall impacts of even marginal increases in income) are also those most at risk of being excluded: exclusion and information-gaps can be self perpetuating.

There is a continued need to reinforce the notion that agricultural development is not gender neutral.  Two examples from the Gender in Agriculture Sourcebook come to mind.

The Warana Wired Village Project in India failed to include women when it linked 70 villages through Kiosks which housed computers and printers.  Women were not encouraged to utilize these resources which resulted in the poorest, landless labors being exluded and a widening of the digital-literacy gap between men and women.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Grand Coast Fishing Operators' Union in Senegal (a womens-based union) has created a network which utilizes ICTs to share price information among 7,500 users to promote their produce, monitor export markets, and even negotiate prices with overseas buyers before they arrive in Senegal.  By recognizing those areas wherein women play a major role along the fishing value chain, this project was able to collectively benefit a large number of people - both women and men.

ICT is one of these great areas which, in my opinion, has true potential to really impact development through some very simple and cost-effective measures.  The speed at which these potential impacts can grow needs to be properly addressed as well (assuring benefits for those working from a disadvantaged technology vantage point).  I think one of the most basic steps practioners can take to address these concerns is to simply expand the dialogue from rural smallholders to rural women and men smallholders.

Based on Reuters Market Light's experience of providing agri information (market prices, localized weather forecasts, personalized crop advisory and agri news) in India, the answers to some of the often asked questions on the topic are as under:

 *   How do farmers use the phone to access information(SMS, voice-based response, phone calls)?

Answer: farmers seem to prefer SMS in local language since it can be easily retrieved, accessed as and when required and shared with other contacts. Voice message is preferred amongst illiterate farmers, though there are an increasing number of cases where illiterate farmers take the help of their family members (e.g. their children) for reading text smses.

*       What types of farmers use the technology?

Answer - Paid services are often accessed by comparatively well-off farmers. Besides having the ability to pay for the same, one key reasons for this is the fact that such farmers are often the early adopters of new technology. Also younger farmers have shown more inclination to accept this medium of information (mobile phones) than older farmers. 

Regards,

Rantej Singh

I appreciate very much the insight written by Shahidi,  and I add that the Bangladesh case related to the effects of mobile phone on the agriculture information is somewhere similar with the current situation in Burundi.