The document discusses the importance of high-quality content in agro-advisory services for farmers, highlighting the need for localized and reliable information. It outlines challenges such as information fragmentation, communication issues, and technology accessibility faced by farmers in India. Key initiatives like mobile agro-advisory services and partnerships are emphasized as essential for providing actionable knowledge and enhancing food security.

1. Delivering high quality content –
A Critical Success Factor for Agro-advisories
Mobile Plus , Chennai, India, September 2011
Sharbendu Banerjee, CABI, India
www.cabi.org
KNOWLEDGE FOR LIFE

2. About CABI
• Established in 1910
• Not-for-profit status
• Owned by 45 member countries
• Global leader in
• infomediary services
• communication of agricultural
research for development
• scientific publishing
• agricultural development
consultancy and project delivery

3. Partnerships
Alliances Linkages

4. Transforming global knowledge
into local insights

5. Agriculture “Knowledge Landscape”

6. The Bottlenecks
Information: The information is held by dispersed and
diversified entities; e.g. academia, businesses, service
providers, farmers, governments etc; Information must
be Standardized for congruity and authenticity
Communication: “WYSINWYG” ; Information
generated for one target audience may not make sense
to other target audiences ; Information must be Re-
purposed as per the target audience
Technology: The “last-mile” is not friendly with many
“common technologies” (e.g. Internet); Technology must
be Accessible and Adoptable for the target audience

7. Farmers’ information need:
● information to make
decisions
What will grow on my soil type?
● answers to questions
What standard should my crop
meet to go to market?
● solutions to problems
An insect is damaging my crop –
what do I do?
But they are cautious and
conservative

8. Farmers want the information
they receive to be:
● Reliable and ● In local ● Affordable to
tested language access
● Updated ● Relevant to ● Easy to
● Accurate their context understand
● Compliant to ● Actionable ● Flexible
local within their delivery options
regulations capacity
Quality Customized Accessible
Our work gives us this insight

9. Mobile Agro-advisory
Our work
● Delivered through Airtel mobile network
● Over 4 million farmers in 18 states of India
have subscribed to date.
● Each farmer daily gets 5 local language voice
messages on crop protection, agronomy, animal
husbandry etc
● Further supported by a local language helpline
What CABI is doing
CABI IKSL ● Providing scientific backstopping service to the
local experts
● Developing content & Knowledge Management
● Information Quality Assurance (SOP & Audits)
● Developed Crop Health Diagnosis inference
Tools for the contact centre agents

10. Our work
Plantwise
What is Plantwise?
Plantwise is a global initiative, led by
CABI, to improve food security by
reducing crop losses.
Plantwise works by communicating
and capturing knowledge
● locally from face-to-face Q&A via a
network of plant clinics to help the
poorest farmers, documenting and
digitising the Q&A;
● internationally via a comprehensive
global knowledge bank.

11. Our work Good Seed Initiative
Identifying food security problems
and working with farmers on the
solutions
● Supported by the Swiss Agency for
Development and Cooperation
● Projects run in Bangladesh and
Uganda
● Working participatively with women
farmers
● Local knowledge and technologies
integrated with new science to
empower women to improve seed
quality

12. Direct2Farm
● Knowledge delivery through
mobile/land- phones
● Farmer friendly Mobile Apps
● Single-window access (portal) for
agriculture information; aggregated
from various sources
● Validated and re-purposed by experts
● High quality, actionable information
● Real time information exchange and
analytics

13. Creating an effective content system
for impactful Agro-advisory services
Content features: Content management:
● Authoritative ● Standard Metadata
● Accurate ● Quality control workflows
● Quality controlled ● Interoperable
● Relevant
● Regularly updated
Delivery System features:
● Locally relevant
● Scalable
● Replicable
● Transferable
● Cost-effective
How will Agro-advisory services deliver this?

14. Partnerships, alliances
and linkages for creating impactful
Agro-advisory services
Partners Alliances Linkages
Content delivery Content Service & product
management delivery
• MNO-s • Infomediaries • Agro-service
• MVASP-s • Agriculture providers
• Rural Service Universities • NGO-s
Providers (IKSL) • NARS (e.g. ICAR) • Markets
• Apps Developers • Agriculture Centres of • Government
Excellence extension services
...and “commitment to quality” brings all together

15. Information Quality Assurance;
for Trustworthiness
• Real-time
• Socio-
economic Feedback Aggregating •Authenticity
impact of sources
•Validated
• Updated
•Actionable
• Holistic
• Contextualized
Generic
Customised
Disseminating Warehousing
• Metadata/Indexing
Standards
•Re-purposed
• Interoperable
• Minimum Distortion Accessing
• Multiple platforms

16. In summary
● Farmers need information, but they are sometime sceptic
● Because each farmer is operating within its unique
climatic, socio-economic and demographic environment,
hence one solution does not fit all
● There is a lack of “trust-factor” about the agro-advisory
services among farmers (specially the smallholders)
● Agro-advisory services need to deal this by providing
● Authentic & Hyper-localized information
● Taking leverage of “partnerships-alliances-linkages” for
maximizing impact and minimizing cost
● Having robust Information Quality Assurance process in
place, to win the “trust-factor”

17. Quality information is key to help the poor
farmers address food security challenges

18. Thank You
Sharbendu Banerjee
s.banerjee@cabi.org
www.cabi.org
KNOWLEDGE FOR LIFE