Mobile phones make quick inroads with farmers in developing world

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As the world population heads toward 9 billion by 2050, there has been much hand-wringing over how to properly feed so many. In the developing world, it turns out mobile phones may be the best hope for growers looking to improve yields, market crops and move out of subsistence-level farming.
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By now, most U.S. farmers are well ahead of the game in terms of keeping track of weather, irrigation schedulers, market prices, and other management tools provided by computer technology. But in the deepest backwoods of the developing world, the introduction of the simplest mobile phones is proving to be a phenomenon of great potential.

Among those watching and fostering the spread of agricultural use of mobile phones in southern Asia and Africa is the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). Recently, Sonja Vermeulen CCAFS Head of Research, spoke with Farm Press on the developing world?s rapid adoption of technology, how it is being used by farmers and the need for education and infrastructure development. Among her comments:

Some background information...

?As a research group, we can?t take too much credit for what?s going on.

?As you might imagine, there is huge interest from private sector, from government, from research agencies. It?s very much a combined effort by everybody to make progress.

?To give a bit of background, the rate at which access to mobile phones is growing in developing countries is absolutely staggering. About 80 percent of the Indian population now has access. The rate of growth in Africa has gone from about 40 percent in 2008 to about 50 percent in 2010 and, this year, is at about 65 percent. And it will just keep on growing.

?This includes poor people, people in remote villages, people who are illiterate. They all have access directly in their own family or they?ll be able to get one through somebody in their village who runs a phone point, or the like.

?Mobiles have become the most amazing way for people to access information. It has completely leapfrogged any of the other kinds of ideas around rural electrification or anything else. Mobile phone technology has leaped it all.

?In terms of agriculture and helping farmers to adapt to change and deal with markets, these phones can be used to share all kinds of information. (For example),the meteorological department in India offers a free, weekly forecasting service. They provide all kinds of practical information for farmers such as to share market information.

?Both in India and Indonesia, they have systems where they put out sales prices for fish at different ports along the coast. Fishermen can literally be sitting on their boats, sorting their catch, check the phone, and say ?okay, X port will give me the best price today.? And they take the fish there to sell.

?In Kerala, India, it has eliminated 100 percent of waste, of throwaway fish in the port markets. So, the impact of this is really amazing.?

Mobile phones and finance?

?The phones are also used to give people direct opportunities to transfer money. In Kenya, a system called M-PESA is almost like an online banking system.

?You can safely transfer money, or the promise of money, by phone. That means people can pay agricultural labor, they can transfer money to a fertilizer company in town and get a delivery, they can transfer money to relatives.

Read more at http://deltafarmpress.com/management/mobile-phones-make-quick-inroads-farmers-developing-world
 
 
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