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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

Agriculture, Health, Health, Maternal & Child Health, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Marketing “Mobile Midwife” in Ghana

Can information delivered on a mobile phone affect the outcome of a pregnancy in a developing country? Can communities and healthcare workers use mobile phones to save the lives of newborns? These are some of the questions that the Mobile Technology for Community Health (MOTECH) program in Ghana is trying to address. Grameen Foundation is working with Ghana Health Service and Columbia University in one of the poorest rural districts of Ghana to try to improve the health outcomes for mothers and their newborns using mobile phones. But once a service has been created, how do you generate awareness for it and ensure there is adequate participation?

In July 2010, we launched a service called “Mobile Midwife,” which enablespregnant women and their families to receive SMS or pre-recorded voice messages on personal mobile phones. The messages are tied to the estimated due-date for the woman so the information is time-specific and delivered weekly in their own language. Nurses also use mobile phones to record when a pregnant woman has received prenatal care. If critical care is missed, both the mother and the nurse receive a reminder message on their mobile phones. To date, over 7,000 pregnant women and children under five have been registered in the system. More detail about the program can be found online in our “Lessons Learned in Ghana” report.

One of the challenges we faced in the development of this system was how to generate awareness for the “Mobile Midwife” service in the first place. Unless people register for the service, they cannot receive the important information we are able to provide about pregnancy. As we talked to people in the rural villages where “Mobile Midwife” would be available, it quickly became clear that communities in Ghana, and particularly the Upper East Region, had been inundated with cartoon-like health message campaigns from myriad NGOs and government agencies. People told us that if campaigns were seen as “too slick,” people would not think the messages were relevant to them. The MOTECH team decided to pursue an approach that sought to provide “aspirational” images that were differentiated from the typical “NGO cartoon” campaign, but still were relevant to the UER population. This included using real photographs instead of drawings, and ensuring that the people in the photographs were wearing clothes in the style of those worn in the rural areas where we worked. Part of the aspirational message was dressing the models in new, clean clothing, which proved to be effective. When field testing the marketing styles, many people said they “liked the lady in the pictures and it made them feel good as one day they would like to be dressed well too.” The team also decided to create some messaging that was targeted specifically to men, in an effort to respect their roles as decision makers in the family, get them to listen to the messages with their partners, and be a part of making positive health choices throughout pregnancy, birth and early childhood. As the program evolves, we expect to experiment with broader reach marketing vehicles such as radio and community mobilization.

Initiative:

Maternal Newborn mHealth

Order:

October 5, 2011/by actualize

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