Do farmers dream of electric sheep?

I have been working on a project for the last 6 months or so, trying find solutions to help increase the farming communities ICT adoption rate. There has been many barriers including the usual suspects;

• lack of broadband infrastructure
• resistance to change
• the fear factor
• lack of training
• perceived lack of relevance and benefits

There are two generations at play in the farming sector;

1. The younger generation who have grown up with standard internet technologies such as email, World Wide Web, mobile communications, and electronic networks of practice . I am aiming to combine all these technologies including the social networking activities to develop a social production solution for Irish farmers.
2. The elder generation have a resistance to technological adoption with fear and physical awkwardness being issues highlighted to me in a series of expert witness interviews. Issues such as the size of the users fingers affecting typing prowess have shown that not even familiarity and training can overcome some of these barriers. As a result, an alternative approach will be required in order to service the needs of this demographic.

A recent paper by Adrian Njenga, a Lecturer of Information Systems at CUEA, demonstrated how African farmers are overcoming the issue of a poor and in some cases no fibre optic network by using a mobile network as an alternative conduit for business. They use their phones to communicate, get information and even trade on a daily basis. The success of the ‘M-Pesa’ network in Kenya has demonstrated that mobile services can benefit operators and can also provide benefits to the ecosystem, including banks, the distribution network, merchants and companies.

Is this the way to get the the farming demographic in Ireland using the Internet as a proper business tool for checking weather, getting the latest market information and updates,using GPS to enable precision farming and even conducting mobile commerce?

From requirements gathered to date, it has been identified that mobile phone penetration has reached 95% in farming communities.  The project I am currently involved in looked at ways of delivering the latest farm business information to the farmer over mobile devices. One approach investigated was to offer a mobile web-versions of popular farming sites but this proved to be too cumbersome for the majority of farmers sampled. The cost was also deemed to be prohibitive, costing 99cent for pre-pay mobile customers and farmers tend not to have data bundles as part of their bill pay packages.

Uptake of the iPhone and other Smart Phone Packages can be considered slow, even though there are some really useful apps available including the Irish Farmers Journal Classifieds App, Agriweb App and a host of input and market prices applications . The big challenge is to offer a solution over a non-smart phone that still services and communicates the needs of farmers while also driving internet adoption and reducing the resistance to change. One way around it is to introduce an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) or Voice Recognition solution which offers functionality that is familiar to the farmer while still delivering information dissemination and m-commerce capability.

The next phase of my project will look at using this approach as a driver and a complementary tool to the traditional web. In my next post I will have some results from the trials I am due to carry out. I will also give a sneak preview of another project I am working on with the farming community, that I really think will be a game changer.

e-commerce farming information systems Innovation mobile web