IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - Fall 2013 - 14
While developing the initial fertilizer recommendation software, the challenge was how to provide access
to the service and to develop the service so that it was
easy to use, i.e., so that the service could be accessed
with a very limited number of specific questions that
the farmers would know. The interface was thus made
user-friendly so that farmers would only have to provide
4 or 5 data-points, i.e., district, sub-district, union, soil
formation, which crop or vegetable they were intending to grow, land size, height of land (high or low-water
level on specific land). A final data point was whether the
field floods during rainy season, and if so, how high, i.e.,
whether to knee or waist height. A training manual for
agents working with farmers-providing a real life diagnostic approach-also was provided.
To overcome the challenge of the lack of computer
access in typical rural communities, Katalyst facilitated a pioneering public private partnership linking
SRDI's fRS service with Bangladesh's two largest
telecom operators, Grameenphone and Banglalink.
With this, the delivery of the fRS service was initiated through the Grameenphone CIC and Krishi
Jigyasha 7676 of Banglalink.
for longer term support for implementation, the
project began talking to the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE), which worked with the data to
develop demonstration plots using the fRS in several
(20) selected areas. In these demo plots the DAE would
get a recommendation from the fRS and would then use
information to determine fertilizer for a plot to test the
results on crop yield so that farmers could see for themselves at the end of the season what the results were.
fRS was initially piloted as part of larger packages
of rural information services being made available through the Grameenphone CICs and through
the voice based information and advisory services
offered as part of its "7676" rural information service by Banglalink, one of Bangladesh's major
mobile providers. During the period 2010 to 2011
the initial deployment via the CICs was extended to
200 locations with the overall channels remaining
the same. from 2012 onward, alternative channels
were also being pursued including through a direct
promotion by the Department of Agriculture (DoA)
Extension and through local fertilizer dealers.
Using Software to Adjust the Conventional
Wisdom of Farmers
Katalyst launched a pilot program in July 2009
with the endorsement of the Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture. The initial phase included 30
upazilas, and supportive training and awareness
programs were undertaken for CIC managers at the
end of that year in those areas. A study to investigate issues such as service delivery channels and
usage, effectiveness, business viability of the different channels, and awareness of the service was
also undertaken.1 Katalyst played the pivotal role to
ensure the availability of this public service through
private sector channels like Banglalink and Grameenphone along with government channels like
the AICC (Agriculture Information & Communication Center) of the AIS (Agriculture Information
Service) under the Ministry of Agriculture. The
Katalyst Grameenphone - History2
Katalyst already had a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Grameenphone to work together
on providing services to farmers. This allowed the
two organizations to mobilize resources and work
together on mutually agreed areas. Grameenphone
has some 500 Grameenphone Community Info Centers (GPCICs) - Telecenters - in place throughout
rural Bangladesh. Katalyst's role was to help develop
a business model, plan service bundling, facilitate
capacity building, and create awareness and facilitate promotion for the fRS. At the fRS, CIC managers were already seeing farmers visiting centers for
various types of agriculture information including
fertilizer.
The CICs provide service in rural areas (roughly
one per sub-district) as self-sustaining quasi-franchise operations. They provide information, mobile
telephone and digital and other services at the local
level (photocopying, digital photography, mobile
telephone repair, etc., in addition to Internet access).
It was thus easy and with only minimal additional
cost that the fRS could be made available through
the CIC via the web. All that was required was the
creation of a website through which the data management and processing of the fRS could be accessed,
and that would provide individual CIC managers
with appropriate training in the use of the fRS as
the link.Providing the farmer's input into the fRS
and then providing the output of the fRS directly to
the farmer.
In this way there was no extra cost for Grameenphone as the fRS would simply be another service
provided through the telecenter using the same overall promotion and marketing programs as the CICs
and their services overall. The service itself is being
offered through the Telecenter at no charge (except
for usual charges online/browsing time on the system), with CICs providing the service as a means for
1
2
Farmers' Decisions around Fertilizer Use
Assessment of the feasibility of different ICT channels in offering fertilizer recommendation Through [20].
14
|
The following section is based on an interview with Grameenphone representative currently responsible for their fRS service.
IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
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