Farmbook - an innovative ICT tool for farm management, training, and M&E
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CRS developed, in part with support from the USAID funded MEAS project, a tool for farm management, training of extension agents, and monitoring and evaluation. This presentation gives an overview of the tool and its functionality
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Farmbook - an innovative ICT tool for farm management, training, and M&E
- 1. FARMBOOK ICT APPROACHES FOR TRAINING, AGRIBUSINESS AND M&E Presentation by: Valerie Rhoe
- 2. The Challenge SMALLHOLDER FARMERS frequently operate lack the skills to analyze market opportunities and costs to engage. TRADITIONAL EXTENSION AGENTS often lack the tools to analyze markets and test the profitability of the crop varieties or production techniques they promote. AGRICULTURE PROGRAMS rarely capture the costs of technical packages and impact on farmer incomes. How can we ensure that we are providing sound business advice to farmers?
- 4. Using Farmbook software to help gather project performance in project work Traditional M&Edata, (monitoring) Field agents collect less information on a regular basis, this information is relevant to the farmers Year 0 Baseline Deep dive Year 1 Year 2 Sentinel monitoring Year 3 Sentinel monitoring Year 4 Sentinel monitoring Year 5 Sentinel monitoring M&E systems Year 1 Frequent Data flow Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Traditional systems focus on the baseline and endline differences, we are working on an approach that has greater emphasis on business performance monitoring and using this Business Business planning support information toclose out the business process within Agriculture Impact Deep dive Year 5
- 5. Distance Learning with Go Course • • • • • Group Organization Financial Education NRM Marketing Innovation
- 6. Purpose of Farmbook Register farmers Develop business plans Schedule crop production activities Calculate gross margins on site Register sales Enable field agents to collect production and crop performance data in agriculture
- 7. Generates Narrative Business Plans/ Profitability Assessments Area Average of Average Average planted to Total Average of of Total of Hired soybean production Unit Kept Units for Labor Acres Units for Food kgs Sale in kgs Costs ($) Average of Profit Based on Average of All Costs Profit Based Excluding on All Family Operational Count of Labor ($) Costs ($) farmers Average of Average of Family Total Labor Cost Operational ($) Costs ($) 1 42 374 15 18 47 149 125 107 2 964 64 858 29 34 100 329 274 70 3 1,417 80 1,278 46 70 170 501 406 17 4 Grand Total 434 1,952 85 1,778 33 105 225 637 528 11 778 65 680 23 32 85 266 221 205
- 8. Audit Service Delivery with Map and Track Currently under development: Map and Track A GIS-linked tracking tool to enable field agents to report all training and service delivery in real time.
- 9. Implementation • • • • • Research Current Projects • Murdoch University (Australia)/ Bunda Agricultural College • Timeframe: Jan 2013-Dec 2014 • Countries: Malawi and Zambia • Research questions: In what ways & to what extent does the • Model enable participating smallholder farmers to link effectively & sustainably to markets? • Private Service Provider (PSP) Model enable participating smallholder farmers to link effectively and sustainably to markets? • MEAS CRS Programs: Zambia , Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Malawi, Tanzania , Serbia 4H young farmers program, Bangladesh Institute for ICT for Development Kenya Ministry of Agriculture, Nicaragua Agros International
- 10. For more information contact: Shaun.Ferris@crs.org Suzanne.Andrews@crs.org
Editor's Notes
- Farmbook is a field-based application that the CRS agriculture has developed on the request of the members of the Agricultural Learning Alliance. The purpose of the application is to enable field agents to help farmers plan their farm business and evaluate their productivity and profitability. The members of the learning Alliance, includes CRS, ACDI/ VOCA, World Vision, CARE, Land o Lakes, Emmanuel International, World Fish, and a growing number of other organizations who meet on an annual basis, to learn how to improve on market based agricultural methods, tools and practical applications.
- We want to find of working with farmers to process and add value to information that we receive from farmers. Using our business planning approach we can provide business information to farmers and integrate this data into our M&E system.
- We are developing a digital approach to our project data management so that we can capture data more rapidly using more standardized M&E forms.We help to train our staff using e-learning methods, so that we have a more standardized message that is being given to farmersWe are using a common platform with standard forms, to register partners, field agents, farmer groups and farmers.We have developed a cloud based business planner and profitability calculator to assess farmer business opportunities.We can use our M&E platform to build a case history of service delivery to farmersThe cloud based M&E platform, is re-purposed to provide survey instruments to monitor the performance of our programming.
- Traditional systems focus on the baseline and endline differences. This misses the changes that happen to people within and betweenseasons, which is important as the business of agriculture is seasonal in nature. To overcome this problem, we are working on an approach that has greater emphasis on seasonal business performance monitoring and using this information to support the business process within Agriculture. This type of monitoring makes the information much more useful to the clients we work with, rather than only being useful to our project evaluation process
- Here is a screen shot of the Brainhoney Marketing Basics course that helps field agents to learn about the theory of marketing. The Distance Learning courses available via the web, and can be downloaded to an offline Player. When field agents graduate from marketing basics, they go onto learning about the Seven steps of marketing, which helps them to learn how to Conduct a market assessmentGather information to write a basic business plan Develop a Gross margin analysisHelp farmers to plan their investments in target value chains and assess their performance
- So what does Farmbook do?The Farmbook application has six basic functions, Registers people into farmer groups, Enables farmers to run profitability analyses in the field, Enables farmer groups to develop a business plans, Supports crop production schedulingAllows field agents to record farm visits, training given and assets transferred, The process will also supports mapping for farmer groups.
- FARMBOOKThese are the screenshots show the types of information that is being gathered when using the Farmbook application. Farmbook can be used online and offline. The data is stored on the device in a local database, the information is also stored on a global database, when devices are synched. The Farmbook application is a tool to help field agents provide business support to farmers, focusing on their product, profit and productivity. We are working on a basic principle that a field agent can support the profitability analysis of 10-15 farmer groups, with 15 to 30 members. Finally, Farmbook uses a sampling process to collect cost data and estimate profit margins for farmers with similar cropping practices, but different farm sizes. The Profit Assessment tool helps farmers to analyze their margins and adjust to improve their yield and income in the next cropping cycle.Farmbook helps extension officers to systematically develop business plans with their farmer groups, allowing them to print the business plan for local use and upload to the web for broader review and comparison.By working with farmer groups on different crops we can start to generate information about farm investments and returns, based on specific types of farmers, (i.e., those farming at different areas, such as 1, 2, 3, X acres of a crop) and also looking at different types of products. This table shows the data for soybean. Using this type of information we can help field agents to become better advisors, ie., business and production inforamtion. We can also farmers to make better decisions about their farming and financing.
- We have developed ‘Map and Track’, application which is a GIS-linked tracking tool to enable field agents to report all training and service delivery in real time. The Map and Track tool runs on iFormbuilder, the same platform as our digital M&E software, allowing access to a comprehensive M&E form library and creating a client and group case history allowing our team to assess outcomes based on trainings, services and assets received.
- PSP: in which participating smallholder farmer’s pay for consultants to deliver key skills Murdock University2-year fundingThey use the term “Market Readiness Capacity (MRC) Model” to describe the 5 skill sets – I think they just wanted a more attractive description for AusAID – but they are the same thingThey are working in collaboration with Bunda Agricultural College, and one of the professors from there (Charles Masangano) is on the board of the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS). IFPRI should know him…The research is now being conducted on the WALA and SMART projects in Malawi, and the FAME project in ZambiaThe Murdoch people and Bunda College staff made a “scoping” visit in May 3013, and are currently in the field again collecting additional data with specially designed forms and procedures. They are giving a verbal report on their initial findings here in Lusaka this afternoon (2 pm)Based on their initial findings in relation to PSPs (they interviewed a lot of them), they submitted a proposed paper to the Cracking the Nut conference – a fairly prestigious conference which is being held in Kigali in January. It was accepted and they will make a joint presentation on the PSPs with Guy VanmeenenAlso please note the Joyous Tata, a post-doc at Univ. of Ill (MEAS) has also initiated a study on the Skill Sets, and will be focusing on the Mawa project in Zambia and the Kenyan government extension efforts in Kenya.
- We are working closely with our ICT and M&E staff to design data dashboards to analyze and publish the data collected in the Farmbook system. This is only a prototype and is currently being reprogrammed to calculate the average income generated per acre of land.