Question 4 (opens 26 Sept.)
What evidence exists of smallholders using and/or benefiting from ICT-based advisory services?
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As pointed out in question 3, the private sector can point to user payment for a service as evidence that smallholders are using and/or benefiting from ICT-based advisory services.
What other types of evidence exist in your experience?
What factors most contribute to the effectiveness of such services?
What are the limitations and challenges?
Let us know what you think. Thank you in advance for sharing your ideas with us all!
Hi All,
Payment for ICT-enabled extension/advisory services can be an evidence for smallholders benefitting from the service. But we still need to investigate the nature of the payment for the service. How sustainable is the payment by the same group of farmers? Do one group of farmers pay this year and stop the following year? Do the service provider jump from one geographic area to another to demonstrate evidence for payment? Is the service provider using different models in a bid to keep payment record on paper? More of the so-called success stories that we have today are doing things of this sort.
But to add to the payment issue, I also think that scaling in terms of increased demand for service by farmers may be an evidence. This may apply to public-funded services that are free for users.
Ben
In response to: What factors other than fee payment indicate farmers benefit from ICT-based advisory services? Su Kahumbu of iCow sent this input via Twitter:
retention rates, feed back, user growth, growth across features
See the Twitter conversation here: https://twitter.com/SuKahumbu/status/250965582873255937
"Retention Rate" is the term I was describing in my post. Let's hear other factors from those implementing "sustainable" projects on the ground.
Ben
I'm not sure it's accurate to use retention rate as a reflection of impact especially if fees are subsidized as part of a non-profit model.
I'm not sure it's accurate to use retention rate as a reflection of impact especially if fees are subsidized as part of a non-profit model.
Farmers are enabled and well versed over technological inputs. They don’t have the magic power of fixing price for the harvested produce. Indian Government is providing minimum support price for the Non-perishable commodities like cereals, pulses, oil seeds, cotton and sugarcane.
The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Hyderabad initiated a project which provides real time price data on perishables covering Thirteen major markets in South India with 150 + commodities in an understandable manner through webpage (Daily price updation @ 1.00 pm) and through mobile phones to overcome the barrier of last mile connectivity (for information log in to www.tnau.ac.in and click dynamic market information).
On experimentation nearly 45151 farmers and 286 scientists are receiving the Mobile based text SMS on Market Wholesale Price Information in Free of Cost.
An on-line study was conducted among the farmers who are availing the SMS, it is inferred that most of the farmers are ready pay the nominal cost for market information. Further, they needs additional services like weather based crop advisories, pest and disease alert, voice SMS on new events and alters. It is also suggested that multimedia based mobile platform for instant and access by the smart phone users.
The problem here is the linguistic and many of the low end models are not supported by font and voice receiving facility.
As IKSL, Nokia Life tools, RML, m-Krishi are providing the demanded based farm information with charges both for pre-paid and post-paid format. Hence, a toll free mobile phone based agro advisory services with 24 x7 may offered with charge. This can be done by Agricultural Universities than Department of Agriculture of any state.
Gathering evidence and monitoring impact is very costly and difficult to do. How can you prove that an increase in revenues has come directly from market information and not from other factors or influences? It is very hard to prove definitely, as certainly other things will come into play. You also want to make sure that an impact study is done by an outside third party, so that the results are objective.
To that end, I wanted to share some results from a study of the French National Institute for National Research (INRA) released in December 2011. INRA found that smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana saw a 10% revenue increase receiving and then utilizing Esoko SMS market prices—the first study if its kind to prove impact.
Julie Subervie, the lead of the project, announced these findings in a presentation at the Market Information Systems Conference in Bamako. In the study, 600 smallholder farmers were comprehensively surveyed on their trading behaviors over the harvest cycles of 2008 and 2009. Half of those surveyed had been receiving market prices via SMS (with the going prices in wholesale markets across the country delivered weekly to their mobile) and half had not (as a control group), so the groups could be compared. This 10% increase comes from statistics around the selling prices of three commodities—maize, groundnut and cassava.
Traditionally, isolated rural farmers simply don’t know what their goods are worth in major markets, which allows traders to come in and offer incredibly low prices to buy their harvests. Armed with price information on their mobile phones, farmers could negotiate a better deal with confidence. In some cases, farmers were timing their goods to market better, and in some limited cases larger farmers were even paying for transport to send their goods to larger markets for sale where they could make more profit.
The impact of data delivered from mobile services on the trading patterns and behaviors of smallholder farmers has not been studied widely to date, but New York University is currently conducting another evaluation to assess the impact on farmers' livelohoods in Ghana. Updates to come in the next year . . .
I will do some more research to find other impact assessments I have read from India and other places to share with the forum.
Just to stay objective and present all the facts . . .
Hi Laura,
Thanks for sharing the findings from the INRA study. I have a question about the control group- how did the study address the issue that those who received the market prices via SMS may have shared the information with others in the control group?
Finding a control group for impact evaluations of mobile services appears to be a challenging area when we consider the nature of mobile phones and how information can be shared so easily and quickly. Are methods such as Randomised Control Trials appropriate in this context?
Thanks, Victoria