Sri Lanka Farmers Earn a Premium for Produce by Mobile Use

27th October 2010, www.lankabusinessonline.com

Use of mobile phones has helped Sri Lankan farmers get better prices for their produce and the technology can help reduce poverty, according to a new United Nations study, officials said.

"There is an informational dimension to poverty - poor people need lots of information for their livelihoods such as on market prices, inputs, weather," said Sriganesh Lokanathan of LIRNEasia, a think tank which helped prepare the report by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

A study done by LIRNEasia on small farmers in Dambulla, an agricultural centre in central Sri Lanka, found that 11 percent of their cost of production goes towards information search, "quite a high percentage," Lokanathan said.

"Information communications technologies (ICTs) have a role in trying to bridge this information gap," he told a news conference held to launch the UNCTAD report called 'Information Economy Report 2010: ICTs, Enterprise and Poverty Alleviation'.

"Without it the vulnerability of poor people increases. ICT can give them pertinent information in time and as accurately as possible."

A study by LIRNEasia this year found that farmers with access to 'Tradenet', a local service that gives prices through mobile phones, are able to earn a premium for their produce.

"By just having market price information several times a day they get premium of 23.4 percent on the average price," said Lokanathan. "So there are real impacts ICTs are having."

The increased access to information through mobile phones has enabled farmers to explore cultivation of different crops and to grow higher value ones that increase incomes and get crop advisory services.

Lokanathan said the potential for ICTs like mobile phones to alleviate poverty in the least developing countries was high as in most LDCs half the rural population is not covered.

But he said it was important to ensure such ICTs were affordable and the experience of South Asia, which has the lowest mobile phone rates, could be useful for other countries.

The UNCTAD report suggests encouraging improving mobile coverage in rural areas and making them more affordable, Lokanathan said.

The report focussed on ICT adoption by poor people, or what's known as BOP - bottom of the pyramid.

"More demand-driven intervention is needed. Policymakers need to better understand local needs," he said. "They need to be aware of what works and what does not in the local context."

The UNCTAD report looks at how ICT can be used in enterprises poor people engage in like fishing and farming and how the poor can be involved in the ICT sector itself, such as selling phone reloads.

Related Info:
Dialog Tradenet - Agricultural Produce Price Information in Sinhala