Achieving Impact at Scale through ICT-Enabled Extension Services (AIS)

Experts in Canada and Ghana developed and tested a cost-effective, interactive, ICT-based solution designed to rapidly connect farmers to trusted information, resources, markets, and financial services. The idea is that, by using mobile phone and radio technology, extension services can reach farmers who live in remote communities off the main roads.

Specifically, AgroTech is a multi-media extension solution that enables last-mile actors in agricultural value chains to leverage ICT and human networks to provide extension support to SHFs. AgroTech provides extension to farmers through both intermediated and direct-to-farmer extension services. AgroTech's mobile-enabled agent services leverage buyer agents and government extension agents to deliver in-person service to farmers. The solution's interactive radio and SMS (text message)/interactive voice response (IVR) services deliver direct extension to farmers. The SmartEx mobile application, an integral part of AgroTech, is designed to improve farm business productivity and profitability. It is primarily a tool for field agents and supervisors to support smallholder farmers and outgrowers to optimize their decision making process through coaching and handholding. SmartEx provides an opportunity for the Agent to know and understand the smallholder farmer in order to tailor services that will convince the farmer to retain his or her services.

Agents deliver services via a workflow approach that begins with in-depth baselining to build SHF profiles that are then used to develop individual plans to set and track farming targets and to target agent outreach and monitoring. During outreach, agents lead community listening groups, host participatory video screenings, and use mobile guides to provide 1:1 technical assistance. Video screenings complement radio programmes (see below) with demonstrations by local SHFs on how to implement more complex technologies and promote discussion. Agents collect mobile monitoring surveys, and a field force management application tracks agent productivity and performance for clients. Programme interactions and monitoring data can be visualised in dashboards and embedded in programme management structures to evaluate results and ensure course correction where needed. This high-touch, highly targeted, and trust-based set of services is designed to deliver high adoption rates among farmers.

According to organisers, field experience has shown that SHFs require more than information and demonstrations to take up or adopt technology. The deviations from recommended practice stem from a lack of disciplined approach to implementing the required actions and from an inability to deal with unforeseen events such as changes in policy, product specifications, price fluctuations, and so on, that require more complex analysis or trade-offs to arrive at a good decision. The SHF needs a trusted coach with access to vast sources of information and knowledge. A Coaching Session is a period when an Agent facilitates learning through discussions and presentation of facts, information, or knowledge in order to help registered farmers in their decision making process and support them to adopt more diligent and rigorous behaviour towards their farm business. There are two main types of Coaching Sessions:

1. Individual Visits are recommended for Coaching Sessions that occur in the farmer's field, and especially if there is other information that is to be taken from an individual farmer's field. Individual Visits are also recommended for sessions that involve discussion of personal information and issues (such as registration, profiling, etc.) that the farmer may not want others to know about.
2. Group Meetings are suitable for Coaching Sessions during which other farmers' experiences and opinions are important for the Session to be successful. Sessions rely on a lengthy video clip or voice recording (up to 30 minutes). During such meetings, personal information does not form the basis of the interactions, unless volunteered by the farmer concerned.

Furthermore, by surveying farmers to find out what radio stations they listened to, and what their knowledge was, FRI was able to choose radio programmes and conduct design workshops in an effort to create the most effective programming possible. FRI works with 6 radio stations to boost their capacity to provide highly interactive and participatory radio programmes that farmers will listen to. To cite an example of the project in practice: Every Monday evening, Kano Sikple heads towards her radio set, certain in the knowledge that she is about to learn something useful. "I know that every Monday I am sure to hear something new about my farming activity, so this motivates me," she says. Kano listens to the AgroTech radio programme on Adars FM in order to help her with her 2-acre maize farm in Kobeeda Number 1, Kintampo, Ghana. This year, she planted one and a half acres of her farm with improved seed, because of what the radio programme had taught her. If it continues this way, she says next year she will continue to buy the improved seed. "Before, I used to do my own kind of farming and I would lose in many ways," she says. Now Kano says she has learned how to use the improved seeds, how to prepare her land before planting, and how to plant in rows. Kano says that it has been especially important for the women of her community. "Women shouldn’t leave themselves out," she says. "Women should do more listening than even the men, because I have seen that the radio program is helping them even more."

Participating radio stations also have access to FRI's Uliza (Swahili for "to ask") platform, which allows them to combine radio and mobile technology so that they can interact with farmers and farmers can call in to find information they missed, or leave messages for the show. Uliza was designed to encourage participatory radio by making it easier for listeners to engage with radio stations and for radio stations to visualise and interpret audience feedback. It utilises VOTO Mobile's interactive voice response (IVR) system and the ubiquity of basic mobile phones to enable a two-way conversation. It enables listeners to vote on poll questions, leave messages, and request the delivery of specific information. For example, in FRI's orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) project, Uliza connected farmers looking to source OFSP vines with local vine suppliers. If a listener responded "no" when asked if they knew where to access vines, the system would be prompted to provide the location of local OFSP vine sellers. Uliza presents data from listeners visually, making it easy for broadcasters to interpret the information and use it during broadcasts. They can air comments left in voice messages, share listeners' questions with on-the-air experts, integrate audience feedback into on-air discussions, and get feedback on radio programmes. Poll results together with the audio recordings (opinions and questions) are assembled on the Uliza dashboard, where they can be accessed by broadcasters, extension officers, and project partners. Audience feedback can quickly be converted to radio programme content as presenters discuss poll results or play recordings left by listeners.

As part of the project, FRI also piloted its Farm Tips service: providing bi-weekly messages to farmers about the latest farming tips straight to farmers' mobile phones. It is a service that pushes messages on agriculture to subscribers, based on the commodity they are interested in. FRI works with an in-house knowledge partner with an agriculture background whose job is to create content for them to record and put on the Farm Tips system. The service pushes weekly or bi-weekly assigned voice messages to subscribers; one can also pull the voice messages by calling a unique number. To date, the system has recorded between 4,000-5,000 subscribers on the 6 radio stations.

The project's research component will test the economic viability of enhanced ICT-enabled extension scaling approaches through different buyer-agent models. As Ghana has become a middle-income country, donors are moving away from supporting handout projects to supporting more sustainable initiatives. The focus of AIS research is to test the sustainability of using existing formal and informal pathways to provide SHF with goods, services, and information to deliver ICT-based extension to SHF. The key question that will be investigated is "Who finances the delivery of AgroTech to farmers?" The models that will be tested for sustainably delivering AgroTech to farmers are:

• Bundled Extension/Input-Credit Service Model, where the cost of extension credit is repaid by farmer in crop together with other input credit at the end of the season and the balance of extension credit is paid by the input credit provider. Grameen will track the willingness to pay by beneficiaries, and this will be assessed through surveys (proxy and actual payments). The value chain actors to be focused on are aggregators, buyers, and farmers.
• Sponsorship/Advertising Revenue Model, where agro-input wholesalers sponsor the delivery of the radio portion, which helps generate additional income through adverts from buyers, agents, and financial institutions. AgroTech Radio is promoted and packaged based on the reach and depth of engagement with farmers. Potential sponsors and value chain actors within catchment area will be profiled, and key indicators that will encourage them to willingly sponsor the programme analysed. The value chain actors that will be focused on are agro-chemical sellers, seed vendors, and service providers of harvesting equipment.
• Transaction Services Model, where agents get additional income from financial institutions, insurance companies, and agro-input dealers by transacting business directly with farmers on their behalf; for example: agency banking, insurance sales, agro-input sales, marketing of tractor services. Potential partners will be profiled, and indicators they will need to make decisions agreed on to leverage the AgroTech Agent as a transaction partner. The value chain actors to be focused on are financial institutions, insurance companies, and agro-input dealers.

The project's policy component involves engaging policymakers and the private sector in the promotion of proven new models to scale food security and market growth in Ghana. AIS aims to contribute to informing policy on how to provide SHFs in Ghana with sustainable access to good quality extension by testing models of delivering AgroTech to farmers. Project organisers are working closely with an advisory board and stakeholder group to guide the research and sustain discussion with private and public decision makers on insights developed from the project. Ultimately, the team is developing these ICT solutions with the goal of making them commercially viable: owned, taken to scale, and sustained by private businesses.

Natural Resource Management, Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

According to project organisers, 40% of those involved in agriculture in Ghana are absolute poor. Agriculture in Ghana is characterised by small holding, subsistence farming; 90% of holdings are less than 2 hectares. In addition, low yields result from the use of outmoded farming methods and substantial yield gaps exist for all crops from achievable levels. Many farm businesses in Ghana remain basic, unable to grow and uncompetitive. SHFs, mostly economically poor farmers and rural women, manage over 70% of Ghana's farms but achieve only half of potential yields. SHFs tend to chronically under-invest in their farms, which exacerbates their low productivity, increases their vulnerability to risks, and contributes to food insecurity. The lack of credit is often cited as one of the key constraints to the efficient operation and growth of many farms. One of the reasons why financial institutions and other credit providers do not lend to SHFs is because of the high rates of credit repayment default. Such loans would be too risky because these institutions are unable to effectively evaluate the credit risk of the farmers due to the lack of credit reporting and data on farmer performance. Grameen Foundation Ghana has identified the field agent, already a key player in the agricultural value chains, as essential to help resolve this issue.

The model includes a greater role for the private sector, including agricultural professionals who source produce for large agribusinesses. A trial in Uganda found that mobile-enabled extension agents helped increase crop sales by 22%. In Kenya, sales jumped 56% when the agents connected farmers to credit using ICTs. The vision is improved access to markets through established supply chains and reduced price volatility for commodities.