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Empowering Chilean Farmers via SMS

Submitted by Sandesh R. S. on June 29, 2010 - 3:56pm
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COOPEUMO, a grassroots farmer’s cooperative with more than 350 small scale farmers as members provides a number of services to farmers such as technical assistance, credit and training.  Last year COOPEUMO started a pilot project called DatAgro to provide SMS based information to farmers. The service started in April, 2009 has been supported by DataDyne, Federation of Agrarian Innovation, UNESCO, Entel PCS and two Chilean newspapers- El Mostrador and El Mercurio.

By providing information related to supply and product prices, climate conditions, and international markets; the initiative allows small scale farmers to align with the market needs. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile phones, farmers today have access to such information. ‘Last week I received one (message) about the weather so I didn’t plant anything because of the information I received and I planted yesterday, after the rain had stopped’ says Hugo Tobar, a farmer. Ninety percent of adults in rural areas of Chile have mobile phones. Farmers today consider mobile phones as a necessity and not a luxury.

Sustainable Agriculture: Food Is Security

Submitted by Elliot Harmon on February 13, 2010 - 2:16pm
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Joseph Sekiku / netnotwired, CC license

The panel The Ever Green Revolution: Trends in Agriculture featured Amitabha Sadangi, Tarcio Handel, and Ashoka-Lemelson fellows Joseph Sekiku and Muthu Velayutham. One of the key questions in the discussion was how entrepreneurs can empower farmers who may only be able to feed their families to develop their farms into sustainable businesses.

Amitabha is the CEO of International Development Enterprises India (IDEI), an organization that provides affordable technologies for poor families in India. In his portion of the panel, Amitabha stressed that problems facing farmers all have their roots in the lack of readily available, clean water. "Water is scarce in most parts of the country and most parts of the world," he said.

Green Roofs and Vertical Farming-A Pipe Dream or Coming Reality?

Submitted by Danielle Dumm on August 26, 2009 - 10:16am
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roof on a globe

At the risk of oversimplifying things, I'm going to try tackling green roofs and vertical farming all in one post.  Shocking, I know, its as if I'm wearing a giant bulls eye on my drupal page.  In any case, I've been inspired.

My first inspiration? This video twittered by Social Earth a few days ago featuring Ashoka Fellow Van Jones (now Special Advisor to the White House) and DC Greenworks, a local non-profit organization right here in the hometown bringing green roofs to high-end clients and neighborhoods alike:

My other inspiration?  This op-ed post in the NYT by the father of the vertical farming movement: Dickson D. Despommier.

Agricultural knowledge is power

Submitted by precart on August 12, 2009 - 2:06pm
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summary: 

“We need to put money in places that create knowledge, not things,” said Wolfram Drescher in a New York Times article today . Drescher is not a University professor. He is a German entrepreneur in the Technology industry--more precisely in the chip-making field. And he is making the case for re-thinking the economy of a region not in terms of manufacturing, but in terms of knowledge creation, research, thinking. His line that I quote here, and another one ("knowledge beats production") made me think of the effort that many Ashoka Fellows are doing, particularly in Rural Africa.  Think about Ashoka Fellow Adrian Mukhebi.

Dr. Mukhebi is reducing the exploitation of small-scale farmers by equipping them with information that allows them to negotiate better prices for their produce. Unlike programs that work for farmers or adjust markets around them, Dr. Mukhebi is empowering poor farmers to be fully informed market participants so that they can remain legitimate forces in the open market without risking exploitation.

Through the establishment of Market Information Points (MIPs) across rural Kenya and the creative use of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs), Dr. Mukhebi collects, processes, and disseminates accurate and timely information on commodity prices, offers to sell and bids to buy, and available markets. A simulated stock exchange at each MIP and the distribution of information through both text message and voice technology gives even illiterate small-scale farmers greater bargaining power when dealing with buyers. At the same time, Dr. Mukhebi’s model channels commodity supply and demand information from farmers into the trading system, allowing a more responsive market that balances the distribution of surplus and scarcity.

Knowledge is power. And to quote Mr. Drescher for a third time, think about what makes a community succesful... What makes Silicon Valley different from Detroit?

“Silicon Valley isn’t a factory anymore,” he said. “It’s a think-tank.”

Photo credit: Marion Post Wolcott

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