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Mobile Phone Technology Improving Farmers Fortunes |
| Source: |
The Monitor |
| Source Date: |
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 |
| Focus: |
ICT for MDGs
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| Country: |
Uganda |
| Created: |
Jan 20, 2012 |
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In a world becoming increasingly tech savvy, even rural farmers in a remote, mountainous and hard to reach area such as Kabale can use technology to solve their immediate farm needs.
For the farmers in the sub-counties of Bufundi and Bubare, the communication device has solved their livelihood problems from the day it replaced the extension worker in providing timely and relevant farm information.
In the two sub counties, sorghum and potatoes are the main source of income. But, the challenges of growing and bringing the crops to the market do not stop at the volatile market prices, and bad road network. They extend to the lack of information on the right seeds, weather patterns, right fertilisers, pests and diseases - not forgetting the endemic lack of credit affecting farmers all over the country.
Too few extension workers
May be their problems would have been half solved if only they had an extension worker in their area. With the national ratio of extension workers to farmers standing at 1:24,000, for the two sub-counties, it is even worse.
"We have more than 46,000 farmers in our sub-county but we have only one extension officer to serve all of them," Apollo Kaboroga of Kacerere village in Bufundi Sub-county says. "Yet farmers have diverse enterprises which an extension officer may not handle even if he reached them."
Thanks to the mobile phone however, the farmers here are waking up from a bad dream.
Kaboroga who is the chairman of the Farmers Forum under the Naads programme in Bufundi sub-county says he has been working with Life Long Learning for Farmers in Uganda (L3F Uganda), a Commonwealth funded project run by Makerere University's Agricultural Research Institute Kabanyolo since 2009. He is one of the 1,000 farmers benefiting from the pilot project that uses information and communication technology to solve the challenges affecting farmers. And the mobile phone has proved to be the ideal partner.
L3F Uganda project pioneered by graduates from Makerere University under the wings of Prof Moses Tenywa, has for the last two years provided timely and relevant information on markets, fertiliser application, right plant spacing, timely planting, diseases like potato blight and other important farm related information, to farmers in this area.
Kaboroga says since most of his fellow farmers own mobile phones, the information they get twice a week has enabled them grow healthy foods, and also, find markets in record time.
He says there have been the challenges of colleagues who cannot read or retrieve messages from their handsets, but, with L3F coming up with a voice application, the illiterate folks are taken care of.
A week ago, L3F tested a voice application with information voiced in Rukiga, the language of the locals. "This application overcomes the barrier of illiteracy since information is delivered in form of speech in Rukiga, our mother tongue," says Kaboroga.
Daniel Ninsiima, the brain behind the innovation says, "We have used voices from successful farmers around the sub-county because fellow farmers can easily relate to them when they hear them on the other end."
The voice directs the farmer to the number that gives access to the particular type of information they need. "Our research showed that over 75 per cent of farmers here had access to a mobile set," Ninsiima says and adds that the farmers can now make inquiries and follow voice instructions on the information they want on their hand sets.
"There are challenges though, in terms of poor network coverage in some parishes like Kashaasha and the cost of the call on the side of the farmer," Ninsiima adds, saying that maybe in the future, telecoms may think about subsidising the service as part of their social responsibility.
Mobile magic
Ninsiima' colleagues and their mentor Prof Moses Tenywa, the director of Makerere University agricultural research institute in Kabanyolo agree that since government's extension service broke down, there is need to come up with innovative ways to bridge the gap and reach farmers at the grass roots.
The success of the project in this very difficult terrain would be good news that policy makers need to embrace to solve the extension work challenges in the country. However, the professor admits that the challenges facing the farmers go beyond production risks.
"We have trained farmers in group formation skills because they have to learn to market and bargain collectively," says the soil science professor. On top of that, L3F project has helped them start and manage their savings and credit cooperative so as they can have a source of funding in their neighbourhood. Although there are still other challenges to deal with, this innovation has been able to help take farmers a step forward and it is hoped, things will get even better.
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