ICTs give farmers the power of choice

This post is part of the Agriculture and Ecosystems Blog’s month-long series on Resilience.

But what are the implications for resilience?

Deep into the mountains of Colombia’s coffee region, a producer uses his mobile phone to find out the daily reference price for the 125 kilogram weight load (two sacks) of dry parchment coffee. He will use that information to decide when is the best moment to sell his crop at the nearest purchase point, a choice that could represent additional earnings. A choice that he didn’t have just a few years ago.

Colombian coffee producer using the mobile to seek technical advice for his crop. Photo: Angelica V Ospina

Things have changed in the last few years for Colombia’s coffee producers, as connectivity has improved in rural areas, and mobile usage has become ubiquitous.

The mobile phone has become a ‘work tool’ that has permeated the different stages of the agricultural production process. Producers in Colombia can check the daily price of coffee through a service provided by the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation, and are increasingly using their mobile phone to receive weather alerts and take timely measures to protect their crops, to communicate more often with the extension officers and receive real-time guidance on the application of fertilisers, to find out about the availability of credit programmes, or to discuss the control of coffee pests, among others .

Research conducted at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Development Informatics (CDI) suggest that mobile usage can have important repercussions in the producer’s capacity to withstand, cope with and adjust to changing climatic conditions, particularly to the more frequent and intense manifestation of El Niño and La Niña in the country.

Emerging examples of the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), such as the mobile phone and the Internet, indicate that the use of these tools is helping to redefine the way in which knowledge is managed, decisions informed, and livelihoods adapted to the challenges posed by climate change and variability.

Colombian coffee producer taking a call on one of his two mobile phones. Photo: Angelica V Ospina

 

 

ICTs usage is also having an impact on the resilience of agricultural producers, by enabling access to new sources of information, knowledge brokerage and social networks, influencing the way in which they adapt to change, innovate, and potentially transform amidst uncertainty.

In the case of Colombia’s coffee producers, CDI findings suggest that the use of ICTs has improved their capacity to self-organise and learn about adaptive practices (e.g. more resistant seed varieties), to establish or strengthen inter-scale linkages (e.g. contact with local/regional institutions), to the flexibility of decision-making processes and the diversification of livelihood options (e.g. information about alternative crops).

As the adoption of new technologies continues to grow, we need to better understand the linkages that exist between ICTs and resilience building in vulnerable agricultural livelihoods.

Research conducted as part of a two-year project funded by Canada’s IDRC suggests 3 key factors to consider:

1. The focus should be on the information, not on the tool. While issues of technology appropriation need to be acknowledged, the local relevance and appropriateness of the content is key for ICTs’ role towards climate change resilience. A producer cannot make decisions based on national weather forecasts that don’t reflect the climatic complexity of mountainous regions, nor based on information that is too technical or specialized.
2. The role of local knowledge brokers (e.g. extension officers) is crucial to facilitate the access, and particularly the effective use of ICT-enabled information. Extension officers are pivotal not only in terms of capacity building and information dissemination among local stakeholders, but also as enablers of change and innovation; important attributes of resilient livelihoods.
3. Mixed-tools approaches can respond better to the complexity of rural agricultural livelihoods. Combining new ICT tools (e.g. Web 2.0 tools/social media, mobile applications) with more traditional technologies (e.g. community radio) and communication mechanisms (e.g. oral culture, story-telling) can assure a wider reach of adaptation messages, but perhaps more importantly, it can help to integrate local voices and indigenous knowledge into processes of resilience building.

What is the caveat? The impact of ICTs is not always positive. They can widen existing gaps in the community, divert scarce resources from other necessary uses, and contribute to ‘misinformation’, among others, thus reducing the resilience of vulnerable populations.

As the afternoon draws to an end in the slopes of Colombia’s coffee mountains, a producer receives a call on his mobile from his son, who recently migrated to the city. He walks to a higher area, where the signal reception is better, and then checks if he has received any text messages from the coffee growers’ cooperative.

Things have changed in the last few years, and as the ‘information revolution’ continues to evolve, we need to better understand its implications – positive and negative - to resilience.