Sri Lankan Farmers Share market info on Mobiles

30h Novembr 2009, www.individual.com

A trial Sri Lankan commodity trade matching portal using mobile phones to improve marketing of farmer produce will need private sector investment to be sustainable, an official said.

Chitranganie Mubarak, a Senior Programme Head of the Information Communications Technology Agency (ICTA), said the project is part of efforts to use mobile phone and information technology to link farmers with markets.

A high proportion of farm produce in the island goes waste owing to poor post-harvest processing as well as marketing links.

Mubarak said the trial service, at present free for farmers, uses SMS (short message service) to enable farmers to link up with buyers.

Buyers and sellers must register on the SMS-enabled commodity trade matching portal.

"The system matches the farmer or seller with the buyers. Farmers can send an SMS with what they have to sell, giving their location. If a buyer also wants the same thing the portal will do the matching," Mubarak said.

The transaction is done off-line.

The system is on trial in the hill country Nuwara Eliya district through Sarvodaya, a non-governmental organisation.

"You need only a simple mobile phone to send SMS which most farmers have," said Mubarak.

Farmers have been given codes for different types of agricultural produce as well as phones under the project, funded by the ICTA's 'e-Society' project aimed at spreading the benefits of ICT.

The agency gives grants to organisations to come up with innovative applications which benefit remote rural communities.

Mubarak said private sector participation would be sought later to make the project more widely available and commercially successful.

"All e-Society projects are launched as pilot projects," Mubarak said. "Later we want the private sector to take it up more broadly. We will be looking for partners to take it up."

A fee may have to be charged for the service later to make it sustainable, she said.

"Anybody, if they seen benefits accruing directly, they are likely to pay for it," she said.

"The sustainability will come only when the farmer feels he's getting a good deal and is willing to pay for the information he gets."

She said another approach to fund the service without having to charge farmers could be to use the platform for commercial purposes relevant to farmers such as companies sending out fertiliser ads.