Hello all, I'm trying to respond to the question posed: "How can we make the provision of agricultural information more demand driven?" I personally find this a very tough question to deal with. I'm afraid I will end up posing mor questions than I answer! It is easy to say that a piece of content needs to be produced in response to a certain demand, or a need, or a wish, or a desire. The challenge is to align the right content with the right demand, at the right time, etc ....? How do people do that? One assumes that content that results from a needs assessment will be more demand-driven (if the needs were properly articulated, understood and translated into the product, and if the customer has not already found some other content to meet her needs). One approach could therefore be to improve needs assessments and require evidence they were carried out, and then acted upon. There's an assumption in this question that the agricultural content currently provided is not very demand driven or can be made more demand-driven ..... I wonder if anyone in this community can share an example of content that is not demand driven.....? All content, even something that looks to be supply driven, is produced according to some demand. But is it the right demand? There are surely many people for whom the information available, or accessible, is neither driven by their demands nor are they able to influence it. It was created for some other, probaly legitimate, demand. Is it these people and their unmet demands we want as the drivers? Who are they? How do we empower them to influence the information producers? I think there are many different people with different demands and depending on the one we discuss, the argument will be different. A research article that may be considered useless - and supply-driven - by a farmer somewhere may be highly valued by another researcher somewhere else. Who decides if this article is demand driven enough and how could we assess this? Should we only produce content that is driven by the demands of farmers? We can also give priority to certain types of demands, discouraging content that is for low priority (supply-driven) demands..... and encouraging content that someone considers to be more demand-driven. How do we decide which demands we will be driven by? One answer is to manipulate the incentives to information production. We can push content providers in certain directions, so they are driven by certain demands. We can make them respond to the demands we want them to be driven by. For example: - We can empower the 'consumers' - by giving them control of the money. In Uganda for example, farmers can decide who in the 'extension' system is selected to provide information to them. Information providers that are not driven by the farmers' demands will go out of business - or have to find another market. - We can encourage certain types of content and channels. If researchers are rewarded for producing farmer recommendations and radio shows instead of academic articles, the academic journals may go out of business. - we can give representatives of the intended beneficaries power and influence over the information producers. ie, by giving them seats on boards and committees where they can veto products that are not driven by desirable demands. - we can 'amplify' the voices of a group so its needs are so loud that everybody listens to it. In many places, we can see groups that got together - farmer associations, private producers, cooperatives - to have a bigger impact. Some build their own information products to meet, and promote, their own specific demands. Why try to drive someone else's product when you can make your own? - we can encourage and empower people whose demands are normally not heard - farmers perhaps - to express their needs; also putting mechanisms in place for this information to be brought to the attention of information providers (who also need to be sensitized to actually pay attention to it). Using ICTs to empower local rural communities certainly seems to be a promising move in this direction. For me therefore, the question is not how to become more demand driven, but how to identify which demands to be driven by, and then which 'levers' to pull that will get the desired behaviour we want ... In my experience, selecting among and responding to different information demands often takes you to the heart of a product's - or an organisation's - fundamental business model. ?? i hope this does not confuse us all even more! best regards Peter

Dear Issah, Many thanks for your comments, and sorry for this late reply! You make 2 points I'd like to follow up: First, the issue of radio. You mention it as a Godsend...Ccan you explain a little more how radio is being used in Tamale to get information to farmers? And with what impact? Second, you suggest that the key role of farmers in the production chain is not recognised. Do you have some ideas or concrete examples how ICTs, for example, could help alleviate this? Best regards Peter

Hello from Holland! The striking thing for me about the 2006 e-agriculture survey was the emphasis placed on information and communication processes and systems, as well as technologies. This despite the whole initiative coming out of the WSIS discussions that focused on ICTs - see [url]http://www.itu.int/wsis/c7/e-agriculture/index.html[/url] For me the real questions are indeed around ways to enhance the contribution of knowledge and information to overcome rural and agricultural problems and grasp opportunities. So I was very pleased with the result. ICTs, if we mean computers and telecommunications (including phones), have a great deal to offer. But they are not themselves alone going to be the solution. I think we need to 'blend' different tools and approaches to make the tastiest dishes. And recognize that the tastiest dish in holland (pickled herring) is nothing like the tastiest dish in Ghana (yam fufu). One set of real innovations we need is therefore to combine the 'old' non ICT tools with the new 'e' ones. I think much is being done already - Helen Hambly mentioned rural radio. Some people also experiment with theatre, and some even use paper! We also need to recognize that there are indirect ways to support rural communities. Last week in Brussels I attended a meeting about rural development ( [url]http://www.brusselsbriefings.net[/url]) in ACP countries - what became clear from the speakers is that the solutions to many rural problems - eg markets - are not in rural areas. So it is with information and communication. For a farmer to benefit from ICTs, it is not necessary for each farmer to have personal access to a computer. By applying ICTs in research, policy and extension systems, we help to make their activities more efficient and effective - and we assume this will produce benefits to rural communities. A second set of innovations we need to make is to make sure that the 'support' systems for rural issues - research, policy, advice, markets, international negotiations, etc - make effective use of knowledge and information. For which no farmer may ever need to be 'connected'! Clare mentioned VERCON in Egypt, Taraneh the AARINENA approach, Joel mentioned Ghana and GAINS. There is massive investment around the world in e-science, e-research, e-markets, e-libraries, e-networks, e-communities, e-extension ... for e-agriculture. Do we know what works? Which are the tasty recipes? How do we make sure these 'systems' also listen to, and respond to, the demands of rural communities and do not share information among themselves only? Finally, a lot of contributions to this forum talked of 'getting information to farmers' and 'using ICTs to connect farmers' - to us I suppose. We MUST recognize that the best rural knowledge is often in the heads and memories of farmers, especially women. A third set of innovations is therefore to see how we can overcome the divide that excludes us from the knowledge of the farming community... And which also tends to discourage rural communities from directly sharing their knowledge with each other. This is really an empowerment agenda, nothing to do with ICTs, that requires a shift in mindsets to give high value to the knowledge the 'beneficiaries' have. I am personally very heartened by some projects and cases - IFAD is supporting work with local learners in africa; prolinnova and others like ileia are documenting farmer knowledge so we can learn from it; and groups like BROSDI in Uganda are actively seeking to promote this 'local content' - even with a blog: [url]http://celac.wordpress.com/[/url]. There must also be other innovative approaches in this area we can learn from? Sorry for such a long message! Peter [/url]