Farmer Cooperatives under the ECAMIC project recognizes the important role of ICT in facilitating access to market information

Prior to the establishment of the ECAMIC project, farmers in the Eastern Corridor used the women traders who came to buy from them as sources of information about the prices of the produce they were coming to buy. This phenomenon meant the buyer was in control of the vital market information about what they were coming to buy. The intervention of ECAMIC is gradually giving way to the seller also being able to refer the buyer to what they know about the previous day’s price from the various market centres thereby taking control of decision making. The provision of accurate and timely market information to farmers in the Eastern Corridor has enhanced their negotiations and marketing decisions concerning the sale of their produce. Market information is now made available to the larger community through notice boards instead of only the cooperatives.

Despite the successes achieved, one of the biggest challenges of the ECAMIC project is how to reduce the recurring costs of the project activities to ensure sustainability when the project ends. Maintaining VSAT for internet access to be able disseminate information to the project field Offices /centres was very costly for farmer cooperatives to pay after the close (project funding ends). Furthermore, the End-User Evaluation of the pilot phase acknowledged the critical role the market price information has been making to the lives of the farm-families despite the challenges associated with the transmission of such information. The principal challenge has been the delay between the information at the field office to the farmers in the communities. To address this challenges, the project resorted to the use of mobile phones to disseminate market information by SMS alerts to farmers. A system called TRADENET (www.tradenet.biz) is an electronic platform that permits users to sign-up for SMS alerts to receive market information for commodities and markets they are interested in. Users can also indicate their areas of business and receive instant SMS alerts for offers to buy and sell as soon as anyone else on the network has submitted an offer via their mobile. This system permits the project to publish any information to farmers through their phones by SMS.

To increase accessibility to mobile phones among farmer cooperatives in the Eastern Corridor he ECAMIC project facilitated the procurement of mobile phones for farmers in view of the shift in emphasis from internet based access to SMS via cellular phones. The process would involve the deployment of a total of 200 cellular handsets at subsidized rates to the farmer’s cooperatives. Women paid 60% and Men paid 70% of the total cost of a mobile phone. Building the capacity of farmer cooperatives on the use this phones to access market information is key in assuring farmers continuous access to market information after the close of the project. To this effect, series of training has been conducted for farmer cooperatives on the use of mobile phones to facilitate accessing of market information. Farmers now receive text messages on update of market price, request for market prices of commodities form various market centers and send offers to sell their produce.