Digital Technologies for Agricultural and Rural Development in the Global South

Richard Duncombe, Richard Duncombe

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786393357
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: IT Industry
• Index: Business

This book shares research and practice on current trends in digital technology for agricultural and rural development in the Global South. Growth of research in this field has been slower than the pace of change for practitioners, particularly in bringing socio-technical views of information technology and agricultural development perspectives together. The contents are therefore structured around three main themes: sharing information and knowledge for agricultural development, information and knowledge intermediaries, and facilitating change in agricultural systems and settings. The book includes: -Views from diverse academic disciplines as well as practitioners with experience of implementing mobile applications and agriculture information systems in differing country contexts.-Case studies from a range of developing countries and information from across the public and private sector.-A set of practitioner guidelines for successful implementation of digital technologies.With contributions reaching beyond just a technological perspective, the book also provides a consideration of social and cultural factors and new forms of organization and institutional change in agricultural and rural settings. An invaluable read for researchers in international development, socio-economics and agriculture, it forms a useful resource for practitioners working in the area.

1 Mobile Phone Applications for Weather and Climate Information for Smallholder Farmer Decision Making

Amanda Caine,¹ Chris Clarke,² Graham Clarkson¹ and Peter Dorward¹*

¹School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, UK; ²Statistics for Sustainable Development, Reading, UK

1.1 Introduction

Smallholder farmers are particularly vulnerable to climate variability and change. Providing smallholder farmers with climate information can enable them to make better farming decisions which can in turn lead to increased food security. The Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) approach ( Dorwood et al., 2015) seeks to support decision-making and build resilience amongst small-holder farmers in Africa by providing climate information and decision-making tools. Whilst it has been successful to date and reached tens of thousands of farmers, greater use of mobile phones and apps to support PICSA may have the potential to enhance certain aspects. Mobile phones are being used increasingly to provide smallholder farmers with agricultural information and advisory services, with a wide variety of mAgri initiatives being established in the developing world over the last few years. These initiatives offer the potential of providing agriculture-related information and services to a large number of smallholder farmers at a relatively low cost. This chapter considers how mobile phone applications may be used to provide weather and climate information to smallholder farmers. In particular, it discusses the development and testing of two proof-of-concept mobile phone applications that use elements of the PICSA approach to provide climate information and decision-making tools. The chapter starts with a brief explanation of the PICSA approach before summarising the findings of a review that was undertaken to highlight the lessons learned from existing mAgri initiatives and inform the development of the mobile applications. The two mobile applications, which focus on historical climate information and participatory budgeting, are then described and the initial observations and findings from a proof-of-concept project in Northern Ghana are examined and discussed. Future developments of the two mobile applications are considered and further research questions posited.

1.2 Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA)

PICSA is an approach that seeks to build resilience at the farm level by supporting decision-making through the integration of information on location-specific climate, crops, livestock and livelihoods (Dorward et al., 2015). It emphasizes practical, hands-on methods that can easily be used and understood by farmers. The approach involves agricultural extension staff or community volunteers working with established groups of farmers ahead of the agricultural season to jointly analyse historical climate information and use participatory tools to develop and choose crop, livestock and livelihood options best suited to individual farmers’ circumstances and the local climate. Closer to, and within the season, farmers may make adjustments to these plans with the aid of fore-casts. Currently relatively little use is made of mobile phones in PICSA.

1.2.1 History of PICSA

Work on developing the PICSA approach started in 2011 at a small scale in Zimbabwe, and further research and development through work in Kenya and Tanzania brought it to a stage that, in 2015, it was scaled out to more than 10,000 farmers across three countries in sub- Saharan Africa (Ghana, Malawi and Tanzania). Building on this, work has continued and at the time of writing PICSA training has been carried out on a pilot basis in Colombia, Senegal, Burkina Faso and Mali, and in Rwanda the approach will reach all 30 districts by the end of 2018.

Good partnerships already exist with NGOs including Oxfam, ADRA and CARE as well as with the required government services. The team are regularly asked to support work in new locations, and requests have recently been made for PICSA to be implemented in Lesotho, Zambia, Niger and other countries including in the Caribbean, Latin America and Asia. Ahead of operating in new countries, groundwork is necessary on meteorological data, identifying agricultural options and training staff. The team are continually improving the approach and this includes learning from feedback and innovation, improving components such as analysis of crop probabilities, working on how to make better use of mobile phones, incorporation of satellite data to provide historical climate information where rain gauge records are unavailable, and developing additional training materials such as videos.

1.2.2 An explanation of the approach

Starting with the farmer at the centre, PICSA has three key components that are developed to encourage an integrated approach to extension. The three components are: climate information; crop, livestock and livelihood options; and participatory decision-making tools.

Climate information

This is made up of locally specific historical climate information and locally specific forecasts on both seasonal and short-term timescales. This involves considerable work and capacity development with national meteorological services. The climate and weather information is then ‘packaged’ and communicated using simple graphs that are useful and useable for extension staff, community volunteers and farmers. Farmers are able to use this information to examine and explore whether and how their climate is changing and, importantly, the variability in the weather conditions they experience, as well as to obtain better understanding of how different forecasts can be interpreted and may help in decision making.

Options

This component involves several steps. Preparation in advance of training of extension staff or volunteers who will work with farmers can help to identify potential options that may be available in specific locations and that help to address climate challenges. In the process of training trainers the extension workers or community volunteers are challenged to consider the different options that may be suitable for farmers in their location. Options may include new enter-prizes and changes to management of existing ones (e.g., new crops, new livestock or other livelihood activities such as starting a new business, and changes to management practices through different crop varieties, planting dates, soil and water management practices, and use of veterinary care). During the roll out, farmers in groups are facilitated by extension staff to discuss and explore their options in a structured exercise.

Participatory decision-making tools

PICSA involves a set of participatory tools to enable farmers to analyse and use the locally specific climate information and then consider their options in the context of their local climate. After considering the information and options, farmers are able to use tools like participatory budgets to plan and make decisions about their farming and livelihoods for the coming and future seasons.

1.2.3 Key principles of PICSA

The key principles behind the PICSA approach are that the ‘farmer is the decision maker’ and to provide ‘options by context’. As stated above, the PICSA approach keeps the farmer at the centre. This includes putting emphasis on farmers making their own decisions and contrasts with some extension approaches that often place more emphasis on providing ‘advisories’ or telling farmers what to do. PICSA looks to provide evidence for decision making and a set of tools that can help farmers to interpret this and then to make their own plans and decisions.

‘Options by context’ is the understanding that all farmers are individuals and have different ‘contexts’: different educations, access to resources, attitudes to risk and goals inter alia. Options that interest and/or will be of use to one farmer may be very different to another even if they are neighbours.

1.2.4 PICSA and mobile applications

PICSA has proven to be successful both at the pilot scale and is successfully going to large scale in several countries, as noted earlier. The participatory nature of interactions between facilitators and farmers is an important part of PICSA, and PICSA makes relatively little use of mobile phones and none of the mobile applications at present. There may be potential to make better use of, and to take advantage of, the increasing availability of low-cost smartphones and tablets in supporting PICSA implementation. These devices provide an opportunity to reach small-holder farmers on a large-scale with locally specific information and tools that are useful for their decision making. However, their ability to reach farmers on a large scale does not make mobile applications a panacea. As a first step in considering the potential for mobile applications to support delivery of PICSA, a review of a range of initiatives and projects that have been implemented using mobile applications for agricultural decision making was conducted.

1.3 Review of mAgri Initiatives

As explained above, the purpose of the review (Caine et al., 2015) was to investigate the use of mobile applications to provide smallholder farmers with weather and climate information as well as any weather-related learning, advisory and extension services in respect of crop production. The review aimed to ascertain the types of weather-related information that were being provided to identify lessons to be learned from these initiatives and to consider their key factors for success. These lessons learned and factors for success would then be incorporated into a proof-of-concept project to develop mobile applications to provide farmers in the north of Ghana with weather- and climate-related information.

Although the initial intention was to look at the use of mobile applications within sub-Saharan Africa, the geographical scope of the review was broadened to include initiatives in India as a consequence of the greater penetration of mAgri initiatives and the increased body of research on these initiatives. The review also included the use of mobile applications on phones, tablets and phablets.

The review was based on the literature, 15 key informant interviews and a case study analysis of 15 initiatives that have used mobile applications with smallholder farmers. The key informants worked for a range of organizations that are involved in the mAgri sector in Africa and India, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), mobile network operators, multilateral agencies, industry associations and private companies and included USAID, CAB International, Oxfam GB, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Vodafone. It was not intended that the informants would be representative of the whole of the sector, but they were selected on the basis of their knowledge of certain aspects of it. The initiatives used for the case studies were selected because they displayed particularly interesting, unusual or successful features, had a focus on weather-related information or showcased a particular business model or partnership. The initiatives are shown in Table 1.1 below. The case study analysis was based on information found in grey literature and from discussions with key informants.

1.3.1 Establishing user needs

The literature review, key informant interviews and the case study analysis all highlighted the importance of ascertaining farmers’ specific information requirements and understanding how information will be used by farmers within their local context whilst or before developing the application. This entails engaging with farmers and local communities to ensure that the content is relevant to them, relates to their own knowledge base and the information can be easily accessed, assimilated and applied by them. The content and the design of the mAgri products must therefore take full cognizance of the educational attainment, gender, age and the informational and technological skills of their target audience as well as the local circumstances in which they are being used (Masuki et al., 2010; Kameswari et al., 2011). All too often the focus is on what the technology can deliver and the ‘perceived’ needs of the farmers by outsiders, rather than developing an in-depth understanding (Hellström, 2010; Glendenning and Ficarelli, 2012). The review therefore reveals how, ideally, mAgri applications should be developed with farmer involvement. Indeed some of the more successful mAgri initiatives, for example, IKSL, have reaped the benefits from their human-centred design approach, with increased and more sustained farmer engagement with their mAgri products and services over the long term.

Table 1.1. List of case studies.

mAgri Initiative	Country	Main information and services provided
Digital Green	Ethiopia, India	Rural livelihoods information
Esoko	Ghana	Market prices, weather forecasts, agricultural tips
Farmerline	Ghana	Weather forecasts, agricultural news, pest alerts, crop prices
Reuters Market Light	India	Extensive crop information, market prices, detailed weather information
IKSL	India	Crop information, horticulture, animal husbandry, news alerts, weather forecasts, entomology
Green Phablet	India	Weather information, forecasts, pest information, crop and agricultural input prices, expert talks, learning packages
MKisan	India	Crop information, market prices, animal health, weather forecasts
Kilimo Salama (now ACRE)	Kenya, Tanzania	Agronomy and agricultural meteorology, weather forecasts
Airtel Kilimo	Kenya	Weather forecasts, crop information, market information
Senekela	Mali	Agronomy, market information
Tigo Kilimo	Tanzania	Weather forecasts, agronomy tips, market price informati...