Question 1 (opens 25 Nov.) What are the main achievements in the area of ICT for agriculture and rural development...

Hi Michael
- Is this something that is already in place and producing results? Or is it a goal that we need to achieve?
I am working for the private sector and we are starting to have succes solving problems in important crops in Spain (like olives, citrus etc) integrating this new technologies. One of the key points is to "go to field" to retrieve data from the plant processes that we would like to control because most of the times the sensors and new technologies as remote sensing etc are not measuring directly our growers problems, so we have designed simple protocols to target data from field to be integrated in our data base. We have done a lot of research during last 8 years to understand the practical perspective of each of this technologies and the utility of the new indicators they are offering us.

But the approach is different if we want to use this new technologies in developing countries to change agriculture with new technologies integrated with mobile phones possibilities. I think there is a big opportunity on that. This is an idea that we have from last 4-5 years and have not developed yet (because of the crisis), but the biggest opportinity is in countries were they still don´t have big network of weather stations: they could develop a new kind of crop characterization points that will impact much more in to help the goberment and the engineers working with growers to solve problems on field.

We are in preliminary talks with an african an south american country to trying develop this idea.

We have finished 3 experiencies in Spain with 14 companies involved and we are starting 3 new projects (in tomato, olive and viticulture) that will complement from a practical point of view the integration of technologies.

In practical agriculture we are like 150 years ago in medicine... we work almost "by guess or based in my experience" without almost any kind of objective information and without any "learning" from the farms past that could guide to define alarms (SMS to growers) or to develop simple App that could use the grower once the alarm is stablished.

At the end the new revolution comes from our ability to register and "create" each microclimate history with new indicators of crops in key areas: we can learn with a "new technical lenguage" from the success and failure experiences and this is a big opportunity for the agriculture engineers (i am) to "learn" from this experience to train growers about the "good practices" that have been able to get positive results in farms similar to them or to avoid the "bad ones".

We could solve the big "gap" among practical agriculture with research centers and transform how education to growers could be developed and adapted to solved their problems working together with them. This is not possible now and we all know that "engineer perspective" in not very well accepted by a grower because he is the whole day in the farm and we go for 30 mit and give him a recomendation only based in experience... it is so easy decide to irrigate.. even a boy can do it.

The preventive agriculture must be the goal to achieve and will start once we develop an easy ability to learn from our experience and we are starting to do so. I see that there are big opportinuties using mobile phones integrated with the learning in crop characterization points.

Hi Megan,

Very great post! The list of points you are making are very interesting and very inline with what I've experienced.
Do you have (a list of) publications that would details these?
Your first point is imho critical and start slowly but surely to emerge: mobile phones are not going to replace everything, but is a new tool that enhance other existing information appliance like radio. Does everybody share this view?
 
I would be particularly interested in 3 other aspects too, and would love hearing from the audience about them:
*capacity building and knowledge gaps
*Deployment of new hardware
*multi-stakeholder discussions

on the first point, one of the key questions imho is to evaluate the size fo the gap between what people are able to do, and what they need to learn to take advantage of new ICT opportunities. In my experience, if a specific service deployed has the potential to improve directly their productions, their sale, or their activities, farmers are very motivated to learn and find strategy to use new technologies. However, in my experience again, there is also a maximum gap that people can't just bridge. For instance, with illiterate farmers, the use of SMS is just not possible. I would be happy to know if people are witnessing/sharing this view or having a different one?

The second point is about relying on what people are already using and have already in their hands. For me it is a matter of scale: equipping a community with new devices is easy, and it is possible to test e.g. new graphical mobile apps. But how can such initiatives scale and reach a noticeable portion fo farmers to have an impact on the agri domain? This is where I've some doubts about all the projections about smartphone penetration. I feel that smartphones will not reach farmers in the next 5 to 10years. Any opinion on this view?

finally your point about multi-stakeholder communications/discussions is also key. One of the great advantages of ICT is its ability to connect people. However, the connection is not always easy, and in particular because the different stakeholders have different ict capacities and different equipment: an ngo in hte capital city have usually a computer and an internet connection. Extension agents are usually educated etc. It is usually not satisfactory to use the lowest common denominator, because it is the least powerful one when you can use other: e.g. if you can use sms, sms is cheaper and more powerful than voice technology. If you can use a smartphone, it is easier and cheaper than sending sms, etc. In that regards, I'm a big believer in multi-channel approaches where each type of stakeholders can use the most accessible and powerful channel. Any opinion on this?


steph

4. Train and then Publicly Deploy:  graduates of the training are 'branded' with T-shirts and caps, helping to reinforce their special status. Some embrace this even further, posting signs and hanging shingles (to advertise that 'the doctor is 'in'', so to speak).
·       The idea is to maintain community engagement, not make this solely a ‘private’ contractual arrangement.

5. Pay for Performance:  targets (for conducting valid surveys of neighboring farmers; for disseminating information or conducting group interactions) are explicit and written -- they are sent monthly to each CKW wirelessly, along with links to their specific set of surveys or job tasks. They track their individual performance in real-time on the phone; and then receive payment via mobile money upon attainment of a performance target.
·       Making this rigorous is essential: e.g. all interactions with farmers are geo-tagged and logged; all surveys are quality-checked both logically and with spot-checks in the field. Consistently strong performance enables a CKW to graduate up to a higher tier of work and monetary opportunity.  

6. Maintain the Focus:  while the overall approach has a strong commercial theme, it is subsidiary to the community-sanctioned role and responsibility. We reinforce this in periodic refresher training, CKW local cohort meetings and in farmer community meetings. The strongest performing CKWs appear in farmer-to-farmer videos and are interviewed on Farmer Voice Radio, reinforcing the intrinsic value and status of the role.
·       In Uganda approximately 450 of the CKWs are women, largely serving the more than 75,000 women farmers registered in the program (35% of the total) -- and we have seen that women CKWs consistently tend to be the best performers, in no small part (we believe) a reflection of the new status they have achieved.
·       We have also learned to become more aware of social dynamics; not all husbands have found they were comfortable with their wives' new-found status and ICT prowess -- incentives can work both ways! 
 
Grameen Foundation continues to refine the model, especially as we now plan to deepen the farmer services that the most capable CKWs can perform in their communities and therefore need to manage the natural tension between creating greater income opportunities for the CKW via the ICT platform and maintaining the integrity of the Community foundation of the model.

I hope this gives you a more concrete picture on this key issue of motivation; let me know if you'd like any more info (or can share some insights from your work).

-- John