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Providing Business Opportunities Information to Farmers and Producers via SMS

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.

Project Details
Project Assessment
Financial support: 
Project has financial support
Sustainability 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.
Expertise needed: 
Technical Expertise: <p>1.Technical consultations to determine software and hardware requirements for a larger scale effort.</p><p>2.Advice about gateway software for text messaging (SMS) for managing messages sent to users of the system.</p><p>3.Experience in programming for mobile phones applications.   </p>
Marketing/Media Expertise: <p>1.Marketing   campaign expertise to spread the use of this platform among the agricultural producers, input suppliers and buyers at the national level.</p><p>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. </p>
Project goals: 
- 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.
Identified 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.

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