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  • Providing Business Opportunities Information to Farmers and Producers via SMS

Providing Business Opportunities Information to Farmers and Producers via SMS

4
stars

The Project:

Short Project Description

Project will create new business opportunities in El Salvador benefiting agricultural producers and smallholder farmers by taking advantage of cellular technology. Product information will be made available to potencial buyers and sellers through SMS

Detailed Project Overview

The aim of this project is to help salvadorian agricultural and agroindustrial producers sell their products in local markets for better prices and obtain better profit margins; thus mitigating the effect of intermediaries or middlemen. A primary target is better marketing  of vegetables and garden crops.

Similarly many of the SMEs that process grains and other agricultural feedstocks also depend on intermediaries and traders, who tend to speculate and inflate prices during time of shortage, generating negative impacts on the profitability of these small companies.

The system envisioned by this project will allow producers and buyers, to post buy/sell offers through SMS messaging directly to mobile phones or through a call center managed by the project where operators will log the information obtained from semi-literate or illiterate farmers. Then summaries of these "classifieds ads" will be sent through SMS and e-mail, to service suscribers. Additionally communities of buyers/sellers with Internet access will be able to see these offers on a project website as well as through different RSS feeds via other web sites. Thus producers and buyers will be able to interchange information and develop commercial activities in a directly develop commercial activities without total reliance on intermediaries

While this system uses multiple channels to create an information exchange network, it focuses on the cell phones since mobile technology is nearly ubiquitous as the most persasive channel with the most penetration in rural areas.

What else have you done in this area?

Currently we are working with a pilot system, that manages and posts buy/sell offers  from buyers and sellers. These individuals are able to call a small call center and an operator requests all the information needed to produce a "classified ad" ready for posting through multiple channels. A daily summary will be sent via SMS as a digest of all the offers published during the previous 24 hour day, divided in various categories. The FrontlineSMS software in combination with Clickatell service is used to send and receive SMS among large numbers of users. Through the call center the user can also call to get specific information about products geographically close to a particular market or urban center and in the same way can request information about buyers for specific products.

The functionality to  directly publish offers through SMS is being added too, where the users write a keyword, either to Buy or Sell, followed by the product information such as name, amount, sell or buy price, and product location. All this information will be added to the pilot system and will be available to be delivered when the users contact to the call center.

The pilot will accommodate approximately 600 users with technological resources currently available, however, to scale to a larger user group and expand it to a regional or even national level, further investment is required for additional technological and human resources.

  • Cause Areas:

  • Previous Prize Tags:

  • Organization supporting your project:

    Winrock International
  • Supporting Organization URL:

    http://www.winrock.org/
  • Does your Project have financial support?:

    Yes
  • Is the impact area of your Project global?:

    No
  • If no, what country(s) does it impact?:

    Costa Rica El Salvador Guatemala Honduras Nicaragua
  • Supporting Organization City:

    Little Rock
  • Supporting Organization State/Region:

    Arkansas
  • Supporting Organization Country(s):

    United States

The Assessment

Type of expertise needed?:

Technical Expertise

Description:

1.Technical consultations to determine software and hardware requirements for a larger scale effort.

2.Advice about gateway software for text messaging (SMS) for managing messages sent to users of the system.

3.Experience in programming for mobile phones applications. 

Type of expertise needed?:

Marketing/Media Expertise

Description:

1.Marketing  campaign expertise to spread the use of this platform among the agricultural producers, input suppliers and buyers at the national level.

2.Design of electronic media and printed materials to publicize the project to institutions, partnerships and other local and international organisms able to collaborate and participate in the project.

Sustainability (financial) model:

The system will be sustained  based on per call charges for the calls made to the call center as well as charges for SMS reception. Users will be charged only for the information they receive or request and with the frequency desired; the user can cancel the subscription at any time. The mobile phone carrier will share part of the revenue obtained from these mechanisms wich will allow cover the operating costs of the project and the expansion of functionalities and additional services.

Potential obstacles:

- Lack of involvement of cellular telephony companies to support this initiative.

- Lack of available budget for acquiring technological resources and to cover operating expenses.

Project Milestones:

- 100,000 users using the first year of operation.

- Training to producers about the system use through cooperatives, associations, communities and others.

-Train personnel at 150 points of presence (e.g. Internet cafes) in 78 municipalities in the country on system funtion in order to be able to service interested buyers or sellers of agricultural products.

-Expansion of this initiative to a regional level so that other countries can benefit.

The Team

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