Mobile ITC for Agriculture: Cell Phones Helping BOP Rural Farmers

Bottom of the Pyramid, Mobile Technology, and Rural Farmers

The issue of mobile phones in rural development and agriculture is an increasing focus of social entrepreneurship at the bottom of the pyramid..

Pride Africa via Drumnet for instance offers a host of fantastic services to farmers via mobile:

DrumNet will be providing currently available information to farmers on leading production methods for the most profitable crops thereby enabling members to grow the right crops using the right techniques. Working collaboratively with organizations that provide up-to-date information on comparative market prices throughout the region, DrumNet will offer this information in easily accessible form. It will work with farmers through established learning organizations such as self-help groups, cooperatives, and Farmers Field Schools to maximize the peer-to-peer dissemination of this valuable information.

To increase market access, the DrumNet network will allow farmers to sell their produce directly to the right buyer at the right time. By aggregating the produce of members, direct access to wholesale/corporate buyers will be possible. This will allow farmer members to circumvent the existing supply chain of small-scale brokers, local transporters, resellers, and other intermediaries that currently extract excessive value from each transaction. DrumNet Agents are recruited and located in existing market centers that will actively compare buying prices and negotiate with wholesale buyers – exporters, processors, large retailers, and large institutions.

To increase overall efficiencies, DrumNet enters into contracts with buyers to provide transportation of the market commodities from the specially allocated DrumNet Collection Points. This ensures a single point-to-point trip between rural community and buyer. Farm produce is thus transported for a much smaller percentage of the value of the transaction than is currently possible. DrumNet support centres are structured to be low-cost both in set-up and in operation. The intention is to rapidly reach scale and sustainability by charging relatively low commissions.

Some of the critical issues when creating and designing a system of mobile technology for the agricultural sector include:

Surabhi Mittal, a Senior Fellow at ICRIER specialising in Agricultural Economics, Sanjay Gandhi, a consultant with expertise in private sector development, and technology and business strategy in emerging markets, and Gaurav Tripathi, a researcher at ICRIER address four questions:

Which types of agricultural information have the most value for farmers and fishermen?
Are mobile phones in practice being used much for agricultural purposes, and if so how?
Have mobile phones helped drive agricultural productivity improvements for farmers and fishermen, and if so how?
What constraints are there on the potential for mobile phones to improve agricultural productivity?

Mobile phones are an essential tool in accessing valuable information in three areas including know-how (crop choice and seed variety), context (weather, plant protection, cultivation best practices), and market information (market prices, market demand, and logistics). “There are an estimated 127.3 million ‘cultivators’ in India. The majority of them are farmers subsisting on small plots of land less than 5 acres in size….A national survey of farmers found that only 40% of farmer households accessed information about modern agricultural techniques and inputs.”

If you are involved with ICT in agriculture, please check out the mobile in agriculture post from Solutions for a Sustainable World by Aaron D. Rose (direct link available above).

As a side note, I’m curious if any of this is wrapped in a software as service (Saas) platform to make it easier to manage the information flow. I wonder if a company could become the Salesforce or Basecamp dashboard of that space. In my humble opinion, the Salesforce model for this application makes more sense because it has more product based flexibility.