Agriculture – Page 5

Agriculture, Energy, Environment, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICTs and Smart Grids, the Perfect Union

Photo Credit: Inhabit

Energy consumption is ever increasing. Supply systems can’t keep up with the demand and are maxed out, causing blackouts, unreliable service and headache. There is limited distribution for rural areas and alternative sources are difficult to integrate into the existing network. How are we to provide energy to a growing and more connected world?

A smart grid is a digital electrical grid. It gathers, distributes, and acts on information through meters that communicate via a wireless mesh network in order to improve efficiency and sustainability of electrical services. Often smart grids can reduce peak demand, shift usage to off-peak hours, lower total energy consumption, and actively manage other usage to respond to solar, wind, and other renewable resources. It allows consumers to optimize the generation, transmission, distribution, and use of energy in a more efficient way. Smart grids are slowly being implemented across the U.S. and Europe.

As a broad concept, a smart grid is envisioned to have the following key characteristics:

Self-healing: The electricity grid rapidly detects, analyzes, responds, and restores power supply;
Digital technology: Two-way communications and ubiquitous metering and measurement enable finer control of energy flows;
Integration: The grid accommodates a variety of resources, including renewable energy (solar, wind, biomass and hydro), demand side management and efficient end-use,
Empowering: Incorporates EE consumer equipment and behavior in grid design and operation,
Power quality: The grid provides quality power consistent with 21st century consumer and industry needs,
Cyber security: The grid mitigates and is resilient to physical/cyber-attacks, and
Fully enables and is supported by competitive electricity markets

The development community has been slow at discussing and beginning to analyze the impact smart grids could have, perhaps because the outcomes can be varied. The UN Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) has suggested smart grids for Sub-Saharan Africa as a solution to the lack of access and increasing population. A smart grid could leapfrog elements of a traditional power system and offer where it was impossible before. It can also offer lower rates during off-peak hours, charging for energy consumption via mobile phone. USAID has signed a partnership for smart grid technology development with Russia and India.

The most exciting example of implementation for 2012 is that of Equador. Under the state-owned electric utility, Electrica de Guayaquil, Equador has installed a meter-to-cash smart meter system that uses Itron and Trilliant’s communication platform. The communication network manages energy loses accurately, measuring use and other applications like theft analytics.

March 9, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Food Security, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICTs for “M&E” Component of the Ag. Value Chain

Photo Credit: Daniel Katz

Access to timely and accurate data on farmers, their households and farm activities is key for policy, decision-making and quality control for development organizations, national governments, funding agencies, project implementers, field workers, researchers and farmers themselves. Demographic data (past and present) on farm households such as land sizes, assets owned, types of soil, weather conditions, gender distribution, literacy levels, types of commodities being produced, diseases and pest, facilities for storage, among others are critical.

Unfortunately, the current status of data on developing nations’ agriculture at both local and global levels is far from reaching the stage at which policy makers can confidently draw upon for intervention due to the complexities with collection and analysis. The result is inefficient flow of resources into these communities due to under or over investments. The challenge is both socio-technical – human skills to design the necessary protocols for capturing these data as well as technological tools to facilitate the management (capturing, analyzing, sharing, etc.) of the data.

For far too long, exploring the role of ICT solutions to support value chain actors in this area have been ignored even though viable and potent ICT tools are in the market. ICT solutions identified in this component could be used in building and generating electronic forms for data gathering, help in timely access to data, facilitate easy and accurate data analysis, ensure monitoring of field activities, help in tracing of goods from farm gate to consumers, and assist in certifying commodities for quality assurance.

Photo Credit: Uganda App Lab

Potential ICT Solutions to Facilitate Agricultural Policy & Decision-Making

These are ICT solutions that facilitate accurate data capturing, analysis and sharing on farmers, their farm sizes, assets, commodities and other key identifications for enhancing policy decisions making by field staffs, governments, investors, donors and feedback into research and development. Examples of apps identified in this category includes iFormBuilder, a mobile platform for building robust forms, offline data capturing and managing data and users from any browser with the iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad with image and audio recording, GPS and mapping functionality, etc; Mobenzi Researcher that uses simple feature phones to high-end handsets to provide a tried and tested solution to enhance field research and data collection; and PoiMapper, a mobile point of interest data collection and sharing solution for affordable GPS-enabled feature phones that can make agricultural fieldwork more efficient and reliable through planning and monitoring of field activities.

Potential ICT Solutions for Traceability and Quality Assurance

These are ICT solutions to facilitate data gathering on farmers, their fields and specific information on their commodities for traceability and quality assurance. Examples include SourceTrace, a suite of ICT applications including traceability module that records delivery and transaction of data both entered manually into mobile device as well as from GPS, RFID and bar code readers, certification module for internal agricultural monitoring processes of agricultural commodity firms such as Fair Trade, and processing module that automates the capture of valuable information on the various light industrial processes of any agricultural commodity; Reliable Information Tracking System (RITS), a new coffee traceability program that is helping coffee growers become more efficient, reliable, and quality-focused by tracking deliveries of coffee from each member down to the details of what coffee varietals and quality score each lot of coffee receives; and, Integrating ICT for Quality Assurance and Marketing, a project that helps to build an internal control system for inspectors of Organic Producers and Processors Association of Zambia (OPPAZ) for quality assurance and thereby improve the value of the products for increased income.

In summary, ICTs have great potential for data management within the agricultural value chain for increased agricultural growth. Improved data used will influence how research is conducted and subsequently the kind of policy decisions that need to be made for funding and investment. For detailed information on ICT solutions for monitoring, evaluation and quality assurance visit ICT4Ag Database by GBI for an interactive experience and feedback.

March 9, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Education, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How Technical Literacy Barrier is Widening the Mobile Phone Gender Gap: 3 New Reports to Consider

Photo credit: DIPTENDU DUTTA/AFP/Getty Images

With International Women’s Day this week on March 8th, several prominent aid and research organizations working in the developing world are releasing some fascinating new reports that explore how ICTs and gender impact each other. Creating a startling picture of the realities of gender disparities within an already gaping digital divide, the reports identify a technical literacy barrier that is hindering development for women at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP), or those living on less than $2 a day. It’s currently estimated that a woman is 21% less likely to own a mobile phone than a man, and of the large population of women that do not own phones, one report revealed that 22% of them claimed the main reason was that they “wouldn’t know how to use it”.

Termed the “mobile phone gender gap” by mWomen, a GSMA program which aims to reduce it by 50% by 2014, this inequality has recently been examined from several different perspectives: four case studies from India compiled by the Cherie Blair Foundation and International Center for Research on Women (ICRW); a research report that offers a narrative glimpse into the lives of BoP women, framework for designing business models and a set of research tools for conducting studies, all created by the GSMA mWomen Program; and an analysis of the results of several ICT gender focused projects conducted by the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (Spider).

Photo credit: Kelake.org

1. Connectivity: How Mobile Phones, Computers, and the Internet Can Catalyze Women’s Entrepreneurship

The Cherie Blair Foundation, a charity that supports women entrepreneurs in developing and transition countries, and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), an organization which aims to improve gender equality and reduce poverty in the developing world, teamed up to investigate four initiatives to target women and observe how technology is helping them to earn income. Through in-depth research and analysis, the report focused on the opportunities and challenges involved to reach several important conclusions:

Women will utilize ICTs to develop their businesses when the technology is available to them, increasing both efficiency and social status
Out of all of the ICTs currently available, mobile phones are the first choice for successful business ventures, with portability and adaptability being the biggest draws
Women using ICTs in their businesses promote their benefits amongst friends and family
Out of the few thousand women highlighted in the case studies, there’s still a lot of potential — perhaps half a billion women — for new entrepreneurial ICT initiatives in India
Partnerships are essential between the public, for-profit, non-profit and social enterprise sectors
Sustainability is still a challenge but could be improved with more multi-sectoral partnerships bolstered by the economic and social benefits
ICTs are attracting women entrepreneurs for their efficiency and time-saving capabilities though exploring new ways the technology can foster support and communication between women entrepreneurs still needs to be explored

Photo Credit: Reuters

2. Portraits: A Glimpse into the Lives of Base of the Pyramid Women

To provide a snapshot of what life is like for women living on under $2 a day, the GSMA mWomen Programme, a global public-private partnership between the worldwide mobile industry and the international development community including USAID and AusAID, created Portraits, a summarized version of a larger research report entitled Striving and Surviving – Exploring the Lives of Women at the Base of the Pyramid, due to be released on March 8th. To represent the mass of quantitative data and information collected from one-on-one interviews during the research, the report presents 8 fictionalized life stories from varying regions, each representing a different important aspect of life for BoP women. Here are just a few of the statistics that can be found in the report:

Of the women who did not want to own a mobile phone, 22% said the main reason was that they “wouldn’t know how to use it”
74% of women chose “a good education for my children” as one of their top five life priorities
83% of the women surveyed had not completed secondary education. 31% had no formal education at all
47% of mobile owners said they had been taught to use their handset by their husbands, while 34% had taught themselves
Only 6% of the women in the study knew (without being prompted) you could access the Internet through a mobile phone, and less than 2% had done so. Amongst young BoP women ages 16-21, 39% had some awareness of the mobile web, though only 5% had used it

Photo credit: womendeliver.org

3. Empowering Women Through ICT

Summarizing the outcomes and conclusions from five different projects using various ICT platforms carried out in five countries — Bolivia, Kenya, India, Rwanda, Vietnam, and Bolivia — this report created by the Swedish Program for ICT in Developing Regions (Spider) focuses on how ICTs can support women in the rural regions of the global south. By observing the impacts of the projects on the lives of each group of women, Spider researchers considered the implications of how technology affects gender just as gender affects technology through:

2 projects in Bolivia: one focusing on empowering female community leaders and one supporting victims of domestic violence through a safe virtual environment
A project carried out in both Kenya and India which focused on ecological sustainability, diversification of livelihood, basic training in ICT through self-help groups
A project in Rwanda which explored the use of ICT in small business development through a women’s basket weaving initiative
A research project in Vietnam which considered gender in the development of ICT.

March 8, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Environment, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Enduring Change: Entrusting Women as Planners

It’s stacked against them. Climate change is impacting developing countries in a real way, disrupting ancestral patterns used by the rural poor for farming, fishing, and daily life. On top of this, women and men experience climate change differently as gender inequalities worsen women’s coping. Women traditional are responsible for the tasks most likely to be affected by climate change: agriculture, food security, and water management.

How can women in these communities be empowered? For one, there needs to be a gender-responsive approach towards climate change policymaking and programming so that women can be important stakeholders when addressing climate change with their skills related to mitigation, adaption, and the reduction of risks.

A manual has been created for including women in the design process by the Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA). CRiSTAL, which stands for Community-based Risk Screening Tool – Adaptation and Livelihoods, is designed to help project planners and managers integrate climate change adaption and risk reduction into community-level projects. It defines gender and includes warm-up activities and exercises that explain climate change that empower poor women to be powerful agents of change. The CRiSTAL approach also “provides a gender-specific vulnerability analysis for different parts of the population, highlighting the specific coping strategies of women, and resulting in clear pointers for how gender specific measures will need to be incorporated into projects.” From this manual, women gain access to knowledge about different hazards, risk reduction, resources and technology that reshape negotiations of comprehensive regimes on climate change. The manual includes examples of natural resource management projects focusing on drought coping strategies in Bangladesh, Mali, Nicaragua, Tanzania and Sri Lanka.

The manual concludes with a call for more government and NGO support, including providing skill transfer through ICT training for women that can change the perception of women in their communities.

March 8, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Family Planning, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Women in Development

mHealth for Women: A Diverse Set of Applications

Photo Credit: Anupam Nath / AP

In an ode to International Women’s Day, we wanted to review a few of the mobile health projects and programs directly focused on women’s health issues. mHealth has a great variance in the type of applications used to promote and assist in women’s health. This ranges from sending health information about pregnancy via basic text messaging to more advanced tools that allow community health workers to collect data, diagnosis diseases, and refer patients. As the need and ability to extend health information to women in developing countries increases, here is a diverse set of examples that have been used or are in current use.

MOTECH

Launched in Ghana, the Grameen Foundation’s Mobile Technology for Community Health (MoTECH) initiative has a duel focus – providing health information to pregnant women and arming community health workers with applications to track the services provide to women and children. This project was funded by the Gates Foundation and has worked in partnership with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and the Ghana Health Service. The “Mobile Midwife” application provides pregnant women with time-specific information about their pregnancy via text or voice messages. This includes reminders about seeking care, advice on how to deal with specific challenges during pregnancy, and knowledge about best practices and child development. The Nurses’ Application allows community health workers to register and track the care provided to patients in the region. By recording patient data in the MOTECH Java application and sending it to the MOTECH database, the system captures the data and can send automatic reminders to nurses for when and what type of follow up care to provide. For more information about the MOTECH as well as the lessons learned, read the report from March 2011, “Mobile Technology for Community Health in Ghana: What It Is and What Grameen Foundation Has Learned So Far.”

MAMA

Launch in May 2011, MAMA (Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action) is a public-private partnership focused leveraging mobile connectivity to improve information and access to health care for pregnant and new mothers in developing countries. USAID and Johnson & Johnson are the founding partners, and the United Nations Foundation, the mHealth Alliance, and BabyCenter are supporting partners. This initial 3-year, $10 million investment from USAID and J&J is being used to build and expand global capacity of new and current mHelath programs in three countries – Bangladesh, South Africa, and India. The beauty of the MAMA Partnership is the focus on country ownership through these partners. And each country has a separate focus based on the specific needs and problems of the maternal health. In Bangladesh, the focus is to decrease maternal morbidity and mortality through stage-based health messages via mobile phones to low-income and at-risk mothers. The public-private partnership network in Bangladesh has already been established. Lead by D.Net, it includes technology developers (InSTEDD, SSD-Tech), corporate sponsors (BEXIMCO), outreach NGOs (Save the Children, BRAC), mobile operators (Airtel, Grameenphone, Banglalink), content providers (MCC Ltd), media (Unitrend Limited, Brand Forum), researchers (ICDDR, B), and government agencies (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare). In India, MAMA is completing a landscape analysis to understand the complex cultural environment and see in what areas mobile phones can be utilized to improve maternal health throughout the country. Finally, in South Africa, MAMA has partnered with the Praekelt Foundation (lead partner), Wits Reproductive Health and HIV Institute, and Cell-life to provide messages to pregnant and new mothers about receiving earlier antenatal care, prevention mother-to-child HIV transmission, and exclusively breastfeeding.

CycleTel

Developed by the Institute for Reproductive Health (IRH) at Georgetown University, CycleTel is an innovative solution, combining a previously used family planning technique with mobile phones. In 2001, IRH created the Standard Days Method (SDM) as a low-cost alternative to family planning based on a women’s menstrual cycle. By avoiding intercourse on a woman’s most fertile days during her menstrual cycle, days 8 to 19, there is only a 5% chance of becoming pregnant. Having developed the system, IRH saw a natural fit with mobile phones. In the original set up, women would use Cyclebeads (multiple colored beads used to represent specific days of a menstrual cycle) to keep track of when they are more likely to become pregnant. Using the same idea, the CycleTel replaced the beads with a mobile phone. Each month on the first day of menses, a women text messages the system. Utilizing FrontlineSMS, it then responds by sending a message showing which days she could get pregnant. In 2009, IRH conducted a research study in the region of Uttar Pradesh, India. The pilot showed the need to tweak the system to fit the region context including the local languages and women’s past experience using mobile phones. But it also showed the willingness of women and men to pay for the service in order to avoid unwanted pregnancies. This program is being operated under to the Fertility Awareness-Based Methods (FAM) Project which is funded by USAID.

Dunia Wanita

Dunia Wanita, which means World of Women, was launched in February 2010 by Telkomsel, a MNO in Indonesia. It is a part of the MNO’s value-added services applications and is specifically for women to receive information on a number of different topics, including health. The subscription costs $0.12 per day. By dialing *468#, women have access to a “one stop info service.” By selecting “Cantik Sehat” (Health and Beautiful), women can receive health information and advice from famous Indonesian doctors. The voice messages include information about sexual health, pregnancy, and healthy living.

These are just a few examples of mobile health applications that are available to women in the developing world. The applications vary in information provided, media used, and business models utilized. This is a great illustration of how diverse mobile health can be in order to reach a targeted group within a country, based on infrastructure, location, health knowledge, and mobile usage/connectivity.

March 8, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Women in Development

How can we empower rural women with bamboo tablet PC designed for “Men”?

Photo Credit: flickspire.com

The theme for this years’ International Women’s Day celebration is “Empower Rural Women – End Hunger and Poverty.” This is in recognition of the critical role and contribution women, especially rural women are playing globally to enhance agricultural and rural development, improve food security and help reduce poverty levels in their communities.

Unfortunately, there are others in Africa (my continent) who still believe that women or girl-child should support their mothers on the farm to send their brothers or boy-child to school. They still hold onto the stereotypical believe that Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines are for boys. No doubt, there is a recent announcement by Debonair Limited that a tablet PC targeted at “men” will be launched in Ghana next month.

My concern is, why for ‘men’ and why in Ghana (Africa)? Is it the right time to develop such a technology for Ghanaian men to celebrate success? What success are we talking about here? Should we rather be thinking of gender specific technologies for production such as ICT solutions for rural women in agriculture? These are questions I wish we can reflect upon as the world celebrates the International Women’s Day (IWD) on this 8th of March for economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.

ICTs are NOT Gender Neutral

At the February TechTalk organized by the USAID Global Broadband and Innovation (GBI) program on “How to Address Gender in Your ICT Projects” the CEO of Sonjara Inc., Siobhan Green, stated that ICTs are NOT gender neutral. Even though I have been thinking about gender specific ICT solutions for women in agriculture, and writing about ICTs for rural farmers before this TechTalk, my interest in the area has increased after hearing this statement. Are these new information and communication technologies (ICTs) really gender-biased?

With the above statement, it is therefore not possible for me to keep silence after reading the announcement from Debonair Limited. According to Debonair’s spokeswoman, ‘the fact is, men take their toys very seriously. After working so hard to achieve success, men deserve to own and play with the cars, the Yacht, the watches and quality clothes. The Bamboo D300 has been developed to celebrate a man’s success.’

Photo Credit: Debonair Limited

The CEO of the company also has this to say:

“Men will fall in love with the Bamboo D300 tablet because it is a simple, makes it easy to do the things men love – transact business, sports, watch movies, read books & magazines, listen to music, download apps, play games, check emails and surf the web on a simple touch-screen interface. It’s great for men of all ages, and provides a great intuitive experience; even for men who do not know how to use computers”- Mr. Adebola Omololu.

Even if this is just a marketing blurb, I think we have moved far beyond it in this information age. I’m wondering which of the above tasks listed by the CEO are beyond the reach of African women? What is so unique about business transactions, surfing the web, reading magazine, or listening to music on PC tablet that African women cannot do? For how long do we continue to widen this digital divide through our cultural and mental perceptions of women in Africa?

Making our priorities right!

Interestingly, I have been researching into ICT solutions – projects and mobile applications currently aiding agricultural value chain actors to increase information and knowledge exchange. Out of over 120 ICT solutions currently identified and analyzed, not a single one is gender specific. This means that it is up to the implementers of these ICT solutions to decide how best to increase women access to the technologies in their projects. Failure to do that will result in under-representation of women in these projects.

So why PC tablet for men in Ghana or Africa at this time? In Ghana, agriculture remains one of the key sectors with more than 80% of all agricultural production done on land holdings less than one hectare. The vast majority of these farmers are subsistence small-scale, rural women who lack access to improved technologies for production, storage, processing, and market information.

I believe what Ghanaian men need at this time is more than PC tablet for fun or pleasure. We need technology companies to think and design ICT specific solutions for our rural women who are “killing” themselves daily to keep us alive. At the just ended IFAD Governing Council meeting in Rome, Bill Gates stated that, “right now, a digital revolution is changing the way farming is done, but poor, small farmers aren’t benefiting from it.” And these poor small farmers are our women.

Women Agricultural Scientists Honored: From Left, Anne Gichangi, Ruth Wanyera and Esther Kimani

Instead of thinking and developing PC tablet for Ghanaian men for pleasure, fun and to celebrate success, I join Dr. Fenneke Reysoo to ask this interesting question: “Men, Where are the Women?”. On this International Women’s Day, Men In Africa, Where Are Our Women In Agriculture?

March 8, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Environment, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

CARMA: the destiny of carbon

Power generation accounts for about one-quarter of global carbon emissions, a major cause of global warming. CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) was created to inventory and monitor this massive output to “equip individuals with the information they need to forge a cleaner, low-carbon future.” There are over 50,000 power plants and 4,000 power companies worldwide available on CARMA’s database, which is produced and financed by the Confronting Climate Change Initiative at the Center for Global Development. CARMA can be used by consumers, investors, shareholders, and policymakers to name a few for influencing decisions on power generation.

For power plants within the U.S., CARMA uses E.P.A. data. For non-reporting plants, CARMA estimates emissions using a statistical model that utilizes detailed data on plant-level engineering and fuel specifications. The database is updated quarterly to reflect changes in ownership, construction, renovation, planned expansions, and plant retirements. The plants can generate power from any number of sources, including hydroelectric, fossil fuels, and nuclear. According to the site, “CARMA does not endorse or favor any particular technology. Our goal is to simply report the best available information on sources of power sector carbon emissions.” In many cases data can be downloaded from the site.

March 6, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Food Security, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICTs for “Productivity” Component of the Ag. Value Chain

Photo Credit: The African

Smallholder farmers face agricultural productivity challenges in the areas of under-investment in R&D; the actual processes of agricultural research and communication; access and utilization of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizer, agrochemicals, etc. by farmers; and accurate information on field production practices. On the other hand, success stories of the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to minimize each of these challenges are being documented across the globe and the potential for increasing the impact of ICTs on agricultural production is huge.

As the first in the 3-piece series on “Mapping ICT Solutions along the Agricultural Value Chain”, this post explains how ICT solutions are being used or can be used by value chain actors within the productivity segment of the value chain. ICT solutions in this category may support value chain actors who are involved in agricultural research and development, input manufacture and supply, extension, and production for increased access to information and knowledge for agricultural production.

Potential ICT Solutions for Agricultural Research and Development (R&D)

Agricultural R&D is a key component of the value chain and in most developing nations, has great limitation due to poor access to the global knowledge pool by the developing nations researchers. ICT solutions in this sub-category may support the work of agricultural researchers, agricultural science students, extension staffs, and farmers to facilitate access to scientific knowledge, exchange of information between and among them.

Examples of ICT solutions identified include mobile applications such as the i) OakMapper, a mobile application which allows users to submit occurrences of Sudden Oak Death (SOD), search for incidents, and to report them to the geospatial enabled database; ii) Rural Universe Network (RUNetwork), a network of several partners in the Caribbean to help improve the availability of local knowledge and information through the development of a rural communication system; iii) eRails, a free website for partners across Africa working in the area of agriculture and rural development to help them share their new innovations; iv) AGORA and TEEAL by FAO and Cornell University respectively helping to increase access of developing nations researchers and academics to scientific journals to facilitate their research work.

Photo Credit: Thulasy Balasubramaniam and Graham Lettner

Potential ICT Solutions for Access to Agricultural Inputs

Increased access to inputs such as seed, animal feed, fertilizer, machinery, financial support, insurance, and irrigation systems at the right time, the right price, and in the right amounts is key for successful production by farmers. Actors within this segment are mostly private sector and for-profit firms that need to be in constant communication with the smallholder farmers to ensure profitable investment. Communication tools are important for continuous flow of information between these partners to be able to develop the right input that works for the farmers. At the same time, input manufacturers and suppliers are expected to collaborate with researchers who test these inputs for their suitability for farmers to help in commercialization and scaling up promising agricultural technologies that could benefit smallholder farmers.

ICT solutions within this category may support activities of input manufacturers, suppliers, and users for timely, more efficient and effective use of these agricultural inputs. Some of the ICT applications identified include the use of i) E-Voucher system in Zambia to facilitate easy access to inputs by farmers, help involve the private sector, and reduce fraud in the delivery of these inputs; ii) the Agrian Mobile Information Center, a mobile app that allows users to access product information while in the field, search by product name, active ingredients, signal word, etc. and iii) Kilimo Salama, an input insurance system in Kenya for farmers as they purchase inputs for their farms.

Potential ICT Solutions for Agricultural Production

Apart from inputs and other new technologies from research, farmers put in a lot of resources and efforts into the actual production process on the field. Smallholder farmers across the globe are known for their innovative activities in the face of limited access to scientific knowledge and resources for production. Information communication technologies can play significant role in either way – connecting them to scientific resources and information and also link these farmers together to share their indigenous knowledge and experiences acquired over the years. ICT solutions in this sub-category may help in communicating information to support field activities by farmers such as weather, pest and diseases, soil nutrient levels, harvesting practices, gestation cycles, and knowledge sharing among farming communities.

Photo Credit: FAO

Some of the tools identified within this group include i) Crop Calendar, an online resource created by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), which provides timely information about seeds to promote local crop production by farmers; ii) iCow, a voice-based mobile application that prompts cattle farmers on vital days of cows gestation period; iii) NEXT2, a geo-social application that is able to connect farmers with similar interest that are geographically co-located through SMS, voice, or mobile web to share local knowledge, expertise and experiences; and iv) a host of traditional radio programs that are assisting farmers’ production activities.

In concluding this piece, it is clear that the huge potential of the new digital network for agricultural productivity is yet to be fully exploited for smallholder farmers. The technologies are affecting the work of agricultural researchers, extension workers, input manufacturers and distributors, private sector organizations interested in partnering with governments to improve agriculture, and some farmers at the remotest communities. But stakeholders need to devise better strategies for fully integrating these solutions into their projects.

This is the first in a 3-part series that explains the role of ICTs within the three major stages of the agricultural value chain – Productivity, Marketing, & Monitoring and Evaluation. We’ll soon be launching a dynamic and interactive version of “Apps4Ag Database” project on March 9^th during GBI’s TechTalk:Mapping ICTs Along the Ag Value Chain.

March 6, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Food Security, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mapping ICT Solutions along the Ag. Value Chain

The agriculture and food security value chain system is known for its complexity with varied actors at various levels interacting among themselves and with their external environment to provide sustainable food security situation across the world. In this complex system, the key for success depends on how well the value chain actors collaborate and coordinate their activities throughout the entire process from research and development through production to consumption.

The agricultural value chain identifies a set of actors and their respective activities that are aimed at bringing basic agricultural product from research and development, through production in the field, marketing and value adding processing to the final consumer. Within the agricultural value chain, irrespective of the model of the chain, three key components can be identified. These are activities associated with – i) productivity (Research and Development (R&D), input manufacture and supply, production on the field); ii) marketing (transport and storage, processing, retail and wholesale); and iii) Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) (policy and traceability). Marking out these components allows for identification of the actors that work within these three main categories along the value chain.

Communication tools for coordination of roles

In a complex system like the agricultural value chain, coordination of roles is key as the actors collaborate to exchange resources. Successful coordination of role calls for appropriate communication approaches and media for smooth flow of resources from one stage to another and from one actor to the other. The importance of communication within the value chain is becoming clear especially with the surge to develop new and innovative information and communication technologies (ICTs) for agriculture and food security.

The U.S. Agency for International Development’s new Global Broadband and Innovations (GBI) program with the mandate to focus the Agency’s attention and resources on leveraging the adoption of ICTs across its development portfolio has been exploring the role of the new technologies along the agricultural value chain for improved resource flow. Throughout our desk research, we have found that there are several discussions, and activities going on with the use of ICTs in agriculture and food security, and others specifically on value chain development. However, little is done to bring the two issues together.

The ICTs for Agriculture team at GBI has over the past few months been working to bring these two issues together to help identify what ICT solutions currently in the market are best fit for each stage of the agricultural value chain. The team has identified and selected over 125 ICT solutions (apps and projects) that apply to the various actors within the agricultural value chain, specifically for this initial stage of the project and has mapped out these tools along the chain.

This is an introduction to a 3-piece series that explains the role of ICTs within the three major stages of the agricultural value chain – Productivity, Marketing, & Monitoring and Evaluation. We’ll soon be launching a dynamic and interactive version of “Apps4Ag Database” project on March 9^th during GBI’s TechTalk:Mapping ICTs Along the Ag Value Chain.

March 5, 2012/by actualize

Agriculture, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

ICTs for “Marketing” Component of the Ag Value Chain

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

Markets for agricultural products is another critical component of the value chain – i.e from the time the produce is ready for harvest till it reaches the final consumer. A number of activities take place within this period from storage, processing, transportation, retail, and wholesale that add value to the produce. These value adding processes are greatly affected by factors such as inefficiencies in trade policies – both local and international, poor post-harvest handling techniques, challenges with storage and processing, limited infrastructure for transportation of produce, and lack of access to credit by farmers at the lean season to help them extend shelf life of their produce.

In the context of communication, the World Bank’s eSourcebook defined marketing in terms of “finding out” what customers want and “supplying it” to them. ICT solutions that target markets for farmers’ produce may have features that connect producers to traders, provide market alerts and status of prices to both producers and traders at various markets, facilitate easy and smooth transactions and price negotiations, ensure easy flow of goods across regions/states, aid market research, and improve storage and processing challenges for value chain actors. Effective deployment of these tools will increase food availability, increase income of producers and traders, minimize post-harvest losses, and help stabilize food prices.

Potential applications of ICTs for retail activities

Smallholder farmers are producers and at the same time retailers. Commodities produced beyond household consumption go to the market for retail. Farmers sell at the farm gate, in their homes, local markets and regional markets to get cash to meet other social and economic needs at home. But due to poor market information at the time of harvest (even at the time of cultivation), farmers are exploited by middlemen or market women who determine the price, and most of the times, the farm produce are left to rot at the farm or the market due to glut in market at the time of harvest. ICTs are helping to reduce this challenge in most developing countries to increase market information for producers. These ICT solutions may support activities of smallholder farmers, traders and consumers with market information and other transaction processes to help deliver produce to the consumers.

Examples include the use of Agriculture Price Alert, an iPhone mobile application that send push notification to users (farmers, traders, consumers) when prices reach the limit they set; M-Farm, a mobile application that helps users to get up to date crop price information, connect farmers together to jointly sell their produce, and help group-buying of farm utilities together; and CellBazaar that uses a suite of applications including SMS, the web and voice to bring ‘the market’ to the handset of its users.

Potential applications of ICTs for wholesale activities

Photo Credit: ICTUpdate

Farm produce also travels from the farm gate to wholesale markets and supermarkets. The produce undergoes value-adding processes such as sorting, storage, processing, grading, packaging, labeling and certification, which may be undertaken by the farmer or the wholesaler. The entire process involves logistics and communication to be able to deliver the right product to the right market. There are specific ICT solutions that support activities of commercial farmers, traders, processors, graders and consumers with market information and transaction processes to ensure quality products in the market. Some of these activities cut across national and regional boundaries for international markets.

Examples include Virtual City AgriManagr, which allows traders to manage the weighing, grading and receipting of their produce collected from each farmer at the collection point and pay suppliers using cashless transactions, Regional Agriculture Trade Intelligence Network (RATIN) which supplies traders with improved early warning marketing and trade information leading to more efficient and competitive transactions in food trade between surplus and deficit regions in East Africa, and the Africa Commodities and Futures Exchange (ACFEX), a Pan-African multi-asset derivatives exchange that provides a continent wide price discovery mechanism, transparency, risk management in a number of areas including agriculture.

In conclusion, a range of ICT solutions are within this “marketing” category of the value chain. Solutions providing market information to farmers prior to cultivation for decision on what crop to cultivate and how much to farm; those that give price alerts from different market locations for farmers to decide on who to sell their produce to; others that connect farmers and traders together to negotiate and exchange their commodities; those that facilitate transactions and payments; and other solutions that ensure storage/warehousing to help add value to the produce and increase farmers’ income.

March 4, 2012/by actualize

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