This document discusses using mobile phones to provide agricultural information to farmers in rural areas. It notes that farmers have an urgent need for new technology, weather, and market information, but existing channels often do not provide timely or relevant data. Mobile phones are gaining acceptance in rural areas as networks expand. Several companies and organizations are piloting programs that send farmers customized SMS updates on topics like prices, weather forecasts, and government policies to help farmers make informed decisions. However, barriers remain such as content in local languages, skills to use mobile phones, device and service costs. Overall, the document advocates that m-learning can help address farmers' information needs.

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M-learning for farmers
1.0 Farmer’s Information Need
- Highly specific in terms of their physical, social, personal and environmental context.
2.0Important characteristics of Agricultural Information
- Different agro-climatic zones have different information requirement based on the crops
cultivated thereby necessitating the need of customised (practical and pertinent)
information collection and dissemination.
- Linkage with the agricultural research and promoting organisations is vital so as to
ensure the accuracy and reliability of information.
3.0The Challenge
- Majority of the farmers have urgent demand for new technology, weather and market
information.
- Few existing channels for the farmers to gain timely and relevant information.
- Reaching the farmers with the latest, on-demand and on-the-move information (audio-
visual training material, literature on scientific package of practice, government schemes,
policies, test reports) a challenge for government and other market functionaries.
4.0Changing Landscape
- With telecom boom and developing rural economy, mobile phones gaining acceptability
in the rural areas.
- With the expanding rural network, telecom companies are increasingly looking to add
new customers across the country with services and handsets aimed to address a
villager’s specific needs.
- The farming community offers great potential for the cellular service providers by
introducing specified value-added services for the farmers.
5.0The Potential
- Working in agriculture means working out of reach of a traditional computer and an
activity based learning style.
- No other platform providing convenience of instant, on-the- move and individualised
information access (breaks the limitation of time and space).
6.0 The Delivery Structure
- 3 pillars
• Content provider – Agricultural administrative departments, research
organisations
• Service provider – Connector of content provider and mobile network operator
(processes the content and disseminates it).
• Mobile network operator
- Service content

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• Information categories covering all aspects of farmers’ lives and agricultural
production like agricultural technology, market information, government schemes
and policies, news, weather forecast, agricultural insect-pest and disease
forecast, agricultural events etc.
- Information sources
• Primary sources - own information generation (research) or collection (traders)
and dissemination to garner information market share. More accurate, stable and
pertinent information from the grass-roots.
• Secondary sources - collated information from internet, magazines, newspapers,
radio, television etc. May be lacking in pertinence and timeliness.
- Information dissemination modes
• Monthly subscription - the user may receive one or more agricultural short
messages each day after he pays monthly subscription fee. The content of SMS
could be selected in accordance with the categories provided by the platform.
Simple to be operated, suitable for farmers not having high education levels.
Content could not be freely selected or the content may not match farmer’s need.
• Order programme - the user sends short massage with the content he wants to
know and receives the message. Farmers could receive the information
passively as per the need. Ability to express because of low education level and
alphabet number limitation poses difficulty.
• Information search and individual information publication - the information
required by the user may be sent to the service provider over the mobile phone.
The service provider searches the information over the internet or circulates the
query in a community and then sends back the information to the user. Based on
the internet, this can make up the shortcoming of order program through the
website work personnel’s modification and coordination. Information share and
interaction in a larger scope possible which could better satisfy the farmers’
individualised demand for information. If combined with the voice service, can
solve the problem of the farmers having difficulty in using the short message.
6.0Bottlenecks / Opportunity
- Content
- Language
- Skill to use mobile phone
- Cost of the handset
- Service fee
7.0Some Research Outcomes
- Mauren and Da Silva (2007) developed a pedagogical design for digital inclusion in the
rural areas for farmers and the construction network of cognitive development and social
capital (Learning Projects of Lea Fagundes).
- Galit and Michal (2007) carried out a pilot case study which aims to examine how socio-
cultural and situated learning aspects are reflected in learning experiences within a novel
mobile learning environment.
- Math4Mobile, a cellular application for mathematics learning. The study obviously laid
foundation for imparting basic mathematical skills to the illiterate farmers of rural areas
through mobile technology.

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- In another study Renee etal studied the social and political challenges related to the
implementation of ICT-Kiosk projects for rural development in India.
- Paul and Tapan (2007) showed that use of mobile technologies and information systems
on the rural front reduced the inefficiency and enhanced the supply chains.
- Indrani etal (2007) offered a design that would enable even illiterate farmers and rural
artisans, besides vocational groups, to use the interface which is a text free one.
- Reuben (2007) conclusively showed how mobile phones and economic development are
interlinked in one of the most important industries—fishing industry—in India.
- Hengyuan etal (2007) proved that though innovations stem from the developed world,
they are fast embraced in developing countries.
8.0Few Market Initiatives
- Reuters Market Light (RML)
• RML provides up-to-date, local and customized commodity pricing information,
news and weather updates. Since the launch of the pilot project in April 2007 in
Maharashtra with the support of the government of India, over 7,500 farmers
have signed-up for the service. RML helps farmers to plan well and make
informed decisions to enhance their crop yields and productivity.
- Bharti Airtel
• Bharti Airtel has made a joint venture with Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative
Ltd. or IFFCO to offer value-added services such as voice messages on market
prices and weather forecasts amongst others.
- Tata Teleservices
• Tata Teleservices is running a pilot project of its application called ‘Fishermen
Friend in Tamil Nadu’. The application allows fishermen to know about weather
conditions, fish and market prices in their local language.
• Tata Indicom in association with the Multi-Commodity Exchange of India and the
National Bulk Handling Corporation (NBHC) is running a project called F2F (farm
to folk) that allows farmers as well as users of Tata Indicom to check existing and
future trading prices of potatoes.
- Ingen Technologies
• Many farmers in Punjab and West Bengal are receiving messages on their cell
phones about weather information specific to towns and districts offered by a Kanpur-
based company Ingen Technologies, the service updates farmers on temperature,
humidity and rainfall with additional parameters such as atmospheric pressure, solar
radiation, wind speed and soil moisture. The system is approved and certified by the
Indian Meteorological Department.
- IIT Bombay
• IIT Bombay has developed a farmer friendly soft ware where registered farmers
can have their queries answered on a mobile phone without having to go to a
kiosk or cyber-café. Earlier, IIT Bombay developed a multilingual portal called
AQUA (All Questions Answered). Farmers can ask questions on crops or

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livestock in SMS either in Marathi or Hindi or English. They can also seek
information in advance and across it later in the offline mode. As a pilot project,
the IIT Bombay has installed three dozen weather-cum-disease forecasting
stations in and around Nashik. Farmers are alerted via SMS about a probable
crop diseases or rainfall likely to hit the crops with the implications and possible
precautions. (Mihika B, 2007)
- Infosys Technologies
• Infosys Technologies has partnered with ACDI/VOCA, a non-profit international
development organisation that promotes broad-based economic growth, to
develop an Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-enabled
application that would improve efficiencies in the agro supply chain in India. The
solution minimises inventory requirements, reduces waste and allows retailers
and farmers to be better integrated. It also gives the organised retail sector
access to a reliable small holder production base, and thereby decreases farm-
to-market losses, currently estimated at 30% to 40% on certain products. The
application also tackles supply chain management from profiling of farmer
clusters to crop planning, scheduling, tracking, and forecasting.