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

Creating accurate, timely and actionable content involves large fixed costs, especialy if the bsuiness model is designed to be scalable. Also, changing consumer behavior to make them accept and adopt a new medium of information requires substantial marketing expenditures. There are various approaches that a mobile phone based agri information provider can take to overcome these cost barriers, some of which are:

a) Create strong collaborative partnerships with other public sector and private sector entities that have relevant content, e.g. agricultural universities, research institutions, govt. agri departments, private sector agri input companies etc.

b) Work with other organizations / companies in the larger eco-system that have strong distribution networks in rural areas.

c) Create public-private partnership projects with public sector organizations and developmental agencies to provide sponsored short-term trials for small-holding farmers who can try out and realize the value of such information service before starting to pay for the same themselves.

d) create win-win-win solutions for other companies / organizations that also target the same set of end users (farmers).

What decisions are improved, and what types of impacts are observed?

Answer - High impact has been observed in:

a) taking informed decisions on where and when to sell the farm output,

b) feel empowered viz-a-viz the middlemen,

c) taking risk mitigation decisions based on localized weather,

d) being aware of availability of scarce agri inputs and availing relevant subsidies.