Agricultural extension refers to the mechanism by which advice is delivered to farmers as an input to their farming practice. Extension agencies should serve as a link between the global agriculture community and the local farming communities they serve. This service can be performed by a government agency, university, private company or non-governmental organization (this includes research institutions).Good agriculture extension contextualizes information to fit the local communities’ needs. Field agents serve as a feedback channel between farmers and the global agriculture community to communicate proven best practices (local and scientific) and answer farmers’ requests for more information. This involves the networking of human and technical capacities from field to laboratories, rapid and reliable communications, and exchange of information between stakeholders.
Due to poor agriculture extension efforts, small farmers in Uganda are unable to exchange knowledge with their peers, limiting the dissemination of scientific and local best practices regarding crop management practices. Lack of information and associated risks, form a major constraint to agriculture development, so systems that can reliably and efficiently capture data and deliver expert knowledge are extremely valuable.
A collaboration between the Grameen Foundation, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO), MTN Public Access Uganda, Agcommons, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has resulted in a tested system for rural development organizations that have effective recommendations for remote farmers, but lack effective mechanisms for presenting them directly to rural communities and monitoring the uptake.
The system developed addresses this missing link by demonstrating how training a specialized corps of community –based information officers known as Community Knowledge Workers (or CKWs) in combination with a mobile-phone based geographic information system (GIS) can provide improved coordination between planning and field activities — in order to more efficiently and effectively gather on-farm information, visually track extension activities, measure extension officers’ performance and more accurately monitor impact of extension activities on local agriculture production.
A geographical information system (GIS) captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data that is linked to a location. A GIS application integrates common database operations such as query and statistical analysis of data results, with the unique visualization and geographic analysis benefits offered by maps. These abilities distinguish GIS from other information systems and make it valuable to a wide range of agriculture-based organizations for explaining events, predicting outcomes and planning strategies.
A farm’s location greatly affects its productivity potential however Ugandan farmers do not have access to location-specific information about their communities. Furthermore, farmers are the best sources of data about local conditions nevertheless they have no easy way to contribute to the information-gathering efforts.
A Mobile Phone-Based GIS Network can transform traditional agriculture extension by allowing field officers to digitally collect and wirelessly transmit various types of data (GPS, picture and tabular) to a centralized, shared access GIS database while in the field — this improves the quality and accuracy of the data and minimizes administration and data entry time and cost. In addition to more accurate data (and cost savings), a Mobile Phone-Based GIS Network can allow agriculture specialists (and other relevant stakeholders) to interact directly with remotely located agriculture extension officers for real time decision making.
Currently, gathering field information for monitoring small farmer activity in Uganda is conducted via government – sponsored agriculture extension officers. This is an expensive, time- consuming, uncoordinated, paper-based process which is prone to errors on several levels:
Collecting field data with paper and pencil/pen risks transcription error, due to various reasons: pages get torn and dirty; agriculture extension officers’ hand writing is poor; data collection forms are not standardized or properly formatted for easy data input
The data collected is not geo-referenced (does not have geographic coordinates linked to data), so data cannot be accurately verified through spot checks or other transparent monitoring and evaluation efforts
All paper forms have to be relayed from the field back to a central collection point – usually a regional office, often times with unreliable electricity and poor (at best) internet connectivity – risking loss of data between the field and the office
In most cases, the field data collected never gets inputted into a shared access, centralized database because of the time commitment needed, the lack of a dedicated staff member responsible for inputting the collected data and/or the database is not hosted on a server and shared with other stakeholders
In order to analyze data (i.e. trend incidence reports, make digital maps, share data with other stakeholders etc), agriculture specialists, GIS specialists, project managers and other relevant stakeholders need the database to be on a centralized platform accessible through the Internet – the lack of this technology infrastructure causes significant time delay between data collection and analysis, resulting in data verification difficulties and untimely technical advice (technical advice delivered to farmers regarding crop management is time/season specific)
The data collection methodology and the technical advice delivered to farmers via agriculture extension officers is highly dependent on the training of the agriculture extension officer, which in many cases is not monitored by the institution analyzing the data – this threatens data integrity
The agriculture extension officers (and the associated farmers) do not have access to real-time information or the ability to accurately communicate field observations back to remotely located agriculture specialists for on-site decision making – this lack of bilateral communication results in lost opportunities for on-site data verification and knowledge sharing
Based on these field realities, Grameen Foundation, the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Uganda’s National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO) designed a pilot project to test if data collection and transmission through the use of mobile phones (and GPS units) is a viable alternative to tradition agriculture extension. The project team used identifying, mapping, monitoring and controlling banana disease as a case study to model this new agriculture extension system.
The Mbale and Bushenyi districts were selected as pilot regions for testing this model because they are major banana growing areas in Uganda, but banana production is being threatened by the increasing presence of pests and diseases. This provided an excellent backdrop to testing this new model of agriculture extension, due to the urgency of this issue and the need for better coordination between Uganda’s agriculture research institutions and banana farmers.
In Uganda a strong correlation exists between income generation through banana production and household food security, however, food security and household income are threatened during disease epidemics in staple crops – In addition, crop failures contribute directly to malnutrition and indirectly to the spread of human infectious diseases and environmental damage as a result of displacement of the rural poor from areas that are no longer productive to crowded urban slums, forests, or marginal lands.
The two month pilot project was conducted by 38 Community Knowledge Workers (19 in each district), to assess banana disease status (based on mapping disease incidence and statistical analysis), banana production (based on farmer estimates) and farmer knowledge of the diseases/pests and their associated control methods.
In the course of 60 days 38 CKWs gathered 3,000 surveys (each 50 containing questions, including pictures of identified banana diseases, GPS coordinates of infected farms, and socioeconomic tabular data). Furthermore the CKWs trained at least 3,000 farmers in the appropriate methods for banana disease identification, preventative measures and control procedures. All farmers that participated in the survey were rewarded with a “Farmer Guide to Managing Banana Disease and Pests” translated in the local language and accreditted by NARO. This visual guide explained scientific best practices to managing banana disease and pests.
The information gathered by CKWs was analyzed by the team of specialists and select farmers were shortlisted for follow-up based on specific criteria (i.e. presence of a new pathogen, areas of high disease concentration, abnormalities in a data set from a particular CKW/farmer, etc). The data was also analyzed to determine the usefulness of the system in charting trends, collecting different types of data (tabular, picture and GPS), verifying data quality and evaluating CKW effectiveness (as a data collector and information agent). Due to the small sample size of CKWs involved in the pilot project (38), each CKW was also individually evaluated to identify the ideal character profile of an effective community based agriculture information officer.
Over 100 farmers that participated in the pilot project were also spot checked to verify if there was uptake of the CKWs’ recommendations for banana disease management. In all cases, the observed farmers had adopted some of the recommended practices, all citing that CKWs were providing a valuable service to the community. Farmers were also polled to compare the agriculture extension services provided by the CKW versus the agriculture extension services provided by their government sponsored agriculture extension program. Farmers unanimously answered that there was no comparison, because their local agriculture officer had never personally visited their farm to collect information or give actionable advice. Furthermore, most farmers did not know how to contact their local agriculture extension officer (often stating that they had never seen or heard of such a person) and had subsequently given up on receiving any useful information from the government sponsored agriculture extension program.
The result of the Mobile-Phone Based GIS for Tracking and Monitoring Banana Disease pilot project is a tested toolkit that can guide any agriculture extension organization towards developing and customizing a similar system. The toolkit includes the following:
- An easy to use web based application that allows project managers to create a customizable survey, send SMS alerts to their field staff and collect various types of data (i.e. digital pictures, GPS coordinates and socioeconomic tabular data)
- A downloadable application stored on GPRS enabled mobile phones that allows extension agents to receive new survey forms, input field data and wirelessly send information to a centralized shared access database
- A centralized database, accessible through the Internet, with sorting, filtering, search, and user permission functionalities
- Training materials and training methodology for agriculture extension agencies targeting banana disease identification and control through a Mobile GIS Network approach
- A tested survey administration protocol designed from 2 months of field trials targeting banana disease data collection and information delivery
- A scientific follow-up protocol designed for data verification and measuring extension activity impact on farm productivity
- A farmer information guide to banana disease/pest identification, prevention and control methods
- Data analysis protocol to map sample area, measure area coverage, chart trends, cross-reference different types of data (tabular, picture and GPS), verifying data quality and evaluating agriculture officer effectiveness (as a data collector and information agent).
Based on the statistical results of the data gathered, field observations and comparisons to past extension activities in Uganda, the Mobile GIS Network for Tracking and Monitoring Banana Disease (utilizing CKWs) has proven to be effective system for community based agriculture extension. This project demonstrated an efficient and effective network to undertake systematic and comprehensive surveys of staple crop growing areas to get an update on the distribution of plant disease and the control strategies being used by farmers in remote villages. The data gathered was used to determine reasons for disease spread and help to evaluate the best strategy for deployment of locally appropriate control options. Implementing an actionable, scalable community based approach (targeting disease identification, prevention and control) delivered through well trained agriculture extension agents, based on the lessons learned in this pilot, should be the byproduct of this intervention.
Currently, no entity provides a GIS link between agricultural research institutes, service providers, private companies, and small holder farmers. Through this project, the Grameen Foundation, IITA and NARO have proven the value and potential of a coordinated Mobile Phone Based GIS Network.
The Project Manager of this pilot, who wishes to protect his/her identity, hopes that all uncoordinated, money wasting organizations which promote ineffective agriculture extension services and utilize paper based, non-geo-referenced data collection activities will see the value in the system created and utilize the toolkit to replicate the effort or customize the toolkit to fit their projects’ needs.
A web site is currently being developed to make this toolkit publically available. For more information stay tuned to your favorite banana blog
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