Most farmers in developing countries face the challenge of marketing their produce and most often meet the unpredictable market prices. How can technology help these farmers? We came across the innovative The Maano- Virtual Farmers’ Market (VFM) which is an app-based e-commerce platform designed with farmers needs in mind. This app is the product of World Food Programme’s Innovation Accelerator, an initiative to support potential innovative solutions to solve hunger. In this case, the VFM seeks to provide a transparent, open and trustworthy space for smallholder farmers and buyers to...
Africa’s economy is based largely agriculture and most of them being smallholder farmers. One of the challenges these family farmers face is access to weather information and forecasting services. Lack of access to relevant weather information is due to lack of access of weather source information, dilapidated weather stations that fail to accurately provide reliable weather data, amongst many other reasons. Kukua is an initiative whose vision is to close Africa’s weather information gap by providing new weather station technology and improved weather forecast accuracy. Kukua seeks to...
In this blog post, Ajit Maru describes all the requirements an ICT product has to have to be usable for the farmer: the hardware, the software, connectivity, skills, content, security and safety in use, privacy and a profitable and productive environment. But, he points out, some problems can rise up: for example, in many countries women are frowned upon or even prohibited to have a smartphone. Another problem is the cost: for a smallholder farmer in India earning about INR 60.000 per year, a smartphone costs no less than INR 5.000, and connectivity costs around INR 100 per month. According...
mFarmer is an app developed by EcoHub that aims to provide free information such as access to market information, training and education to improve their productivity and yields and mobile money in order to enable farmers to be part of the formal financial system. mFarmer provides farmers with information such as weather data, optimal uses of fertilizers and inputs, sustainability best practices, and other content improves their profitability and their livelihoods. Watch the mFarmer pilot video: Credits: mFarmer The great majority of the world’s farmers have limited access to broadband data...
Digital Green is a non-profit development organization that disseminates agricultural information to rural communities using digital video. The platform partners with local actors (public and private sector as well as civil society organizations) to share knowledge on agricultural practices, livelihoods, health and nutrition, using locally produced videos. Digital Green uses local social networks to connect farmers and experts, the thrill of appearing on screen motivates farmers, and homophily is exploited to minimize the distance between teacher and learner. Digital Green is currently...
CGIAR launched the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, a new initiative that aims to convene researchers to use big data in order to help improve food security, resilience in the face climate change as well as encouraging rural development. Big data are immense stocks of information collected in computers worldwide, and it can be a potential resource for planning and decision-making. Applied to agriculture and rural development it can help give robust responses to some of the most important challenges of our time: climate change, food insecurity and environmental degradation. For this...
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) recently held on the 27th of June a seminar entitled, " Towards Inclusive Rural Communication Services: Contributing to Poverty Reduction and the SDGs ". This seminar is timely in that FAO recently aligned its strategic objectives with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). There is an interest in reaching out to the rural communities, and in particular smallholder and family farmers face social, economic and environmental challenges and access to information can make a huge difference in allevieting poverty. In 2014, FAO...
Esoko is a communication tool created with a view to building connection between businesses, projects, NGOs, governments and smallholder farmers. Esoko started as a price information service but the team soon realized that farmers needed much more than market information and added weather alerts, crop advice, and linking buyers with sellers. Various research finds such services can improve incomes for farmers by roughly 10%. Watch this introductory video on Esoko: Credits: Esoko Over the years, Esoko developed two products: Tulaa and Insyt . Tulaa is a mobile money solution that allows...
Literacy Bridge was founded in 2007 to improve livelihoods through comprehensive programs that provide access to locally relevant knowledge. Its ‘Talking Book’ is a simple and low-cost audio-based mobile device that allows people with minimal literacy skills in rural areas, without electricity or internet access, to get access and share knowledge on agriculture and health. The Talking Book can speak multiple languages and can play content on different topics based on the knowledge of local experts. It also allow recording onto it, so that users can create and document their own knowledge...
Nigeria has one of the largest inventories of uncultivated farmland on earth, but they are losing crops in volumes because of labor shortages and lack of mechanization.” according to Jehiel Oliver, CEO of Hello Tractor. Many smallholder farmers cannot afford to pay someone else for high-season help. Owning a tractor would solve many of those problems. The first part of the business is the small, 15 horsepower tractor itself that Hello Tractor sells at $4,000, 10 times cheaper than the average tractor found in Africa. Each tractor comes with a GPS tracking device, so that its position can be...
