My Blog : Mobile phones can help save a farmer’s livelihood !!! Make better use of mobile phones in fight against poverty !!!

In more and more low income contries farmers have used mobile phones to improve livelihood. Over past few years penetration of mobile phones has surged from 2 to 25 per 100 inhabitants. Mobile is simple and affortable to be used by poor.

How Mobile can change life of poor farmers
1. Overcoming lack of information : Poor people often lack information that is vital for their work. This include current market price, weather conditions, advisory tips.

- Fishermen may have time to visit only one port while their catch is fresh. If buyer at the port are paying less money they must sell their. Mobile phones can provide information to select best option while still at sea. In southern India this has increased 10 % fishermen profit.

- Researchers in Phillipines use mobile to provide farmers with right information related to right amount of fertilizers resulting in maximising yield saving money and environment. Fertilizer represent 20 % of total cost. Too little use of fertilizer results in low yield and too high leads to wastage. Farmer can DIAL M and provide details of field size to get corrent usage of fertilizers.

2. Insurance and Payment through phones
- Imagine u own a small farm kenya and invested most of money in fertilizers and seeds. Draught sweeps and and you loose whole crop. Large farm has insurance but its expensive and requires assessment and inspection. Small farmer can nor efford this. To address to them following system was implemented : When u buy seeds, fertilizers use mobile to capture picture of barcode. Send this as MMS it registers seeds etc purchased against farmer mobile numebr.Solar power weather stations monitor condition. This determines if weather is severe to impact crops. If crop fails because of draught and u have registered fertilizer etc then insrance is paid bypassing costly inspection and assessment process.

Government Role
Government of India has to take full advantage of mobile technology and bring innovative usage of mobile in rural India. This includes correct- timely information, Insurance , Direct seeling to markey , mobile phone as bank/payment system.
Its an opportunity to lift poverty and livelihood of people but it requires innovation , proper policies and strategy . Government has to act as enabler.
There would be no harm in having separate commitee like UID team whose focus is to enable mobile adoptation and applications for rural population.