Question 5: What are the methods for sourcing appropriate content to be delivered to farmers, what standards...

Thanks Natalia for pointing out this difference. I agree with you and as I stated in my original post, the farmers local knowledge and innovation is just one source of content that could be used. And again, needs to be "jointly validated" - I hate using the term validation but... That takes care of the quality assusrance aspect.

With regard to quality assurance, I like the structure being used both by M-Kilimo and IKSL where they have frontline staff, supported by subject matter experts/specialist and again independent evaluators. I only hope that the structure is operational, not only on paper.

Also the use of CABI with the IKSL is a plus.

Another strong content provider that I will recommend is The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library (TEEAL) at Cornell University. TEEAL already has strong presence in most of these low income countries through its "library in a box" services.

My question, however, is to what extent are we using the national agricultural research institutes and universities? And what kind of collaboration are we expecting to have with these publicly funded institutes? This is because most of these institutes and universities already have rich raw materials that can be repackaged into useful content for farmers to use through mobile services.

I already cautioned the national agricultural extension services (NAES) in my post at GBI website and believe that something needs to be done to revive both the publicly funded research institutes and extension services or they die.

Ben

Method of Sourcing Content
 

• Printed literature and website information that are authentic and are available in public domain
• For information not available in the public domain, special tie-up with appropriate organizations to enable content enrichment and broadening of the knowledge base
• Feedback and success stories from the customers

Standards to be followed while disseminating information to farmers:

• Protocol of information dissemination is required to be developed for each category of information.
• Requirement in respect of the following should be well defined in these protocols of information dissemination

1. Source
2. Adequacy
3. Accuracy
4. Relevance (location specific)
5. Clarity
6. Sensitivity to the Socio-cultural aspects

Who is best placed for quality assurance

Quality assurance can be by

1. In-house content personnel for developing content plan and protocol
2. Experts who will be Vetting the content for messages
3. In-house content personnel for carrying out regular internal audit
4. Obtaining Feedback from farmers through participatory appraisal to improve the services
5. Periodic audits  conducted by external agencies

Ben is making a very valid point about local knowledge and technologies, but also about the role of national agricultural research institutes and universities as valuable source of locally adapted and validated knowledge.

I think we all agree that there is a lot of useful information out there, but often not accessible. At TECA, we found that a lot of highly relevant knowledge about successful agricultural practices and technologies for small producers comes from projects. When a project ends, the lessons learnt are often not documented in a way that could be useful for extensionists, local NGOs and farmer cooperatives in the project area and beyond. We encourage all those organizations working at field level with smallholder producers to document their experiences and share their successful practices for example on a platform to make them widely accessible for the benefit of small producers. For rural users it will be beneficial to have one or few entry points for accessing practical information from different sources, in different formats (audio, video, text and images), across issue areas and regions rather than having to search on highly specialized platforms, focusing only one format or one specific topic.

Of course, documenting and collecting information is only one step. As you have discussed above, the next step is to disseminate this information in a format that is useful for rural people. In the case of TECA, we partnered with organizations such as the Grameen foundation, which use information from TECA, among other sources, for their farmer help line and community workers.

Andrea

 I have been following this discussion with much interest.  When question #5 was posted regarding content I was hopeful I would learn something relevant to what I have been working on; a SMS based solution for farmers called Next2.us.  When I saw bkaddom's post and the terrific feedback I thought I would take the opportunity to introduce myself and talk about what we are doing with Next2.  I was excited to read the discussion that in my mind validates our approach and focus.

Next2 system that allows people to discover, share and communicate around location and common topics of interest using SMS on even simple feature phones.  

Next2 is a "geosocial" network that allows people to automatically connect around location and by common topics of interest or concern.  By sending a text message, a Next2 subscriber can signal what they have, want or would like to learn or talk about and Next2 automatically matches and then exchanges text messages between users based on similar location and overlap of sharing "circle" without revealing a user's mobile phone number.

Subscribers can discover others nearby and communicate using their Next2 identity and our free SMS shortcode.  Subscribers can exchange both public and private messages. Public messages appear at their Next2 web page (example http://m.next2.us/next2) Private messages are only exchanged between users and do NOT appear on the interent.  In essence, Next2 takes simple feature phones with out data connection and through use of SMS puts those phones on the Internet.  By going to a Next2 subscribers web page and clicking on a link you can send the subscriber a message.  Then message appears on the subscribers mobile phone as a new text message.  The subscriber can reply by text message and the Next2 software routes it back to the sender as SMS or email.

I do not mean for this to be a commercial plug for what we are doing but to describe a system that we have built and deployed in Kenya and soon in Nigeria that is built to exchange user generated content so farmers can discover, share and communicate to mobilize local solutions to local problems.

We have over 450 beta users of our geo-message match technology in Kenya and the USA. In speaking with NGOs and others interested in our solution we have come up against the chicken or the egg dilemma.  There is much interest but really no value when participation is low.  We believe we have a way to bring immediate value to users, add a very important service to help build a user base for the message match technology.

The new feature addresses some of the points raised here about providing research and other non-user generated content to farmers.  The new feature is a SMS keyword auto-messaging service that is very easy to use.  A next2 user can send a text message "get Next2 subscriber name" and next2 immediately returns a list of topic words the subscriber makes info available about.  The farmer can then just text "get name keyword" to get that topic's content.  NGOs, government agencies, suppliers, researchers and others can easily create a Next2 name (identity), login and create their keyword list and keyword messages by just using an internet browser.  Currently we allow unlimited number of keywords and 800 characters (5 text) per keyword message (we can increase it to 800+).

All the features of Next2 are available by SMS and also via mobile web version and we have created our first mobile app for Nokia Symbian phones that has easy-to-use menus for subscribers to post geo-match messages.  The Next2 Nokia App can be branded and customized so Next2 identity and keywords can be embedded right in the App to make it even easier for farmers to request information by SMS.  We are speaking with number of NGOs in Kenya about creating a Nokia App for farmers.

We are also testing in Nigeria right now a way for us to quickly deploy the Next2 solution in other emerging markets.  The solutions is similar to how FrontlineSMS works but instead of plugging a SIM card into a personal computer, we plug a SIM card into a in-country hosting provider that then connects the SIM card to our cloud solution on Amazon server.  This allows us to use a longcode to provide Next2 solution to all farmers in a country.  We believe this will allow us to quickly deploy Next2 in other markets in Africa, Asia and Central and South America.

Please visit our web site at http://www.next2.us as we try to move to better one at http://wp.next2.us. Brian Puckett

I think we need to discuss in depth the aspect of “what standards should be followed when disseminating information to farmers”? We have not discussed enough the role of the intermediary here. To me a knowledge worker or a call centre operator is a critical part of the value chain. S/he has access to a vast repository of knowledge and in majority of cases (human call centre based / time delay model) this entity takes the final decision on what content to push to the farmer. Experts are usually one step removed from this process. E.g. farmer helpline in India has a provision of tagging multiple answers to a question. Does one size fit all? Can we cite few examples of managed quality assurance process in place or are we still learning by doing when it comes to managing and assuring quality content?

Good point, Aman.

That also brings issues where we need to look at the option where the experts will need to visit farmers field to be able to do the right diagnosis to the problem. Do we have provisions for that? Are there examples of situations like that?

Those of us from the field will agree that not all problems can be solved through phone calls or sms. We tried in some cases for farmers to take pictures of the infestation and send to experts but... Sometimes, the expert need to see the infestation, disease, etc. on the ground to be able to recommend a solution. Farmers may try their best to describe the situation but who knows.

Do we have some "failed" or "unsuccessful" stories of expert advice. Those on the ground should be honest and share situations where their recommendations led to disaster probably because the right diagnosis was not done. I believe if we have farmers on this forum, we would hear some counter arguments.

Ben