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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.