Dear Riggs,

Thanks for sharing the info.

From our experience of e-Krishok, we found that in addition to these kind of transaction cost, farmers can save their produces from different kind of disease and pests by making a phone call or sending an email to our help desk. And result of this kind of service contributes significantly, even up to 100% in many cases by saving produces.

Also for searching 'quality input', farmers now avail mobile based services to ensure proper management of land and crops.

The ICT in Agriculture is a very useful reference for all of the practioners as well as policy makers.

Many countries are still struggling to integrate ICT enabled services in agriculture, and most are still struggling to come up with a Business Model. Based on our e-Krishok experience, we do see that PPP is the only proposition to make ICT services in agriculture sustainable. All stakeholders in PPP model have to ensure their benefits and create a WIN WIN situation, once the relevant partners are on board it has proved that the model works even with all operational complexity. In e-Krishok model, Bangladesh Institute of ICT in Development (BIID) www.biid.org.bd innovate the concept of e-Krishok (Electronic Farmer) and we have partners like Grameen Phone, ACI Limited and Katalyst by accomodating respective benefits of each stakeholder. Identifying right partners and facilitate their incentives are the major challenge to develop this kind of business model.

Thanks Judy for sharing these options.

We have seen farmers usually habituated with FREE information provisions, payment for information is something really tough to introduce at this stage of socio cultural environment. Similarly, we have experienced that farmers can pay indirectly (via sms or for phone calls), specially local experience encouraged us to come up with a new project by introducing SMS based subscription to avail information & advisory services on agriculture, livestock and fisheries. If we can properly position the service and promote to the targetted customers, I see a potential solution for our long discussed 'finnancial sustainability' issue for similar kind of services.

Same time we are introducing market linkage services which will incorporate a Service Charge for registration and any transaction (i.e. sale) to establish a proper business model.

Dear All,

Thanks Shahroz for giving some practical references from Katalyst experience.

Its quite interesting to see diversified 'impact' in ICT based agriculture interventions or initiatives. We do see it from two different perspectives, one is more on ICT component based and another is impact on agriculture. And these two perspectives are equal important for the practitioners, specially for the private sector players. We feel more comfort to see that ICT component (in terms of technology, innovation, service) function properly, and if it works successfully, we can frame it to become more beneficial for the target customers. In private sector we have to consider that there is no other options rather ensure 'benefit of usage' to the customers, so I think it is much complex from the development perspective to define the indicators and measure impact in ICT interventions in agriculture. 

Lets hear more from the practitioners and private sector.

Regards,

Shahid

Dear All,

Thanks Asad for bringing this very interesting issue of ''Universal set of indicators'' for impact assessment.

Surely, there are scopes to set some common indicators which may be benficial for different stakeholders like development agencies as well as private sectors. In some cases, we already experienced this kind of common or universal indicators in many initiatives, specially in MDGs.

In ICT initiatives for Agricultural projects, the very basic indicators mostly includes productivity issue which is little complex to identify and measure the magnitude of contribution. Based on last few years limited global experience of e-Agriculture initiatives, I am sure there are few indicators common in different initiatives which can be reviewed and studied further.

Since integration of ICT in agricultural initiative is a new trend, we have to be more innovative and flexible to come up with a set of indicators, particularly to define some universal indicators. 

Any other comments on this from the SMEs ?

Regards,

Shahid

Dear All,

I would like to see contributions from the private sector on these issues which may give us a different dimension of this dicussion.

In general, when we (as a private initaitive) frame and develop the business plan as a commercial venture, it is must to see the RoI (Return on Investment) is most impotant factor. And this return basically measured from financial perspective where consideration goes to Opportunity cost, Net present value or time value of money. Here indicators are mostly in terms of revenue, time line and customer satisfaction.

All entities carry out regular monitoring regardless private or development organization. It has been observed that post facto studies are more often used in development initiatives.

Thanks,

Shahid