Posted on April, 28, 2016 at 09:38 am
One of the biggest challenges experienced by smallholder farmers is a lack of reliable, timely and affordable information about the market so as to make a business decision.
This is compounded by access challenges. Either tools are not available, costly or complex for the farmer and other players in the agricultural value chain or it is the mode of dissemination and points of access.
However, there has been changes over the years with technologies that are affordable and readily available.
The introduction of technologies like mobile apps such as the Infotrade app has simplified access and dissemination of information and sealing business deals.
Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), which is used to send text between a mobile phone and an application programme in the network has helped farmers and other players in the sector to use information from content managers and disseminators such as FIT Uganda.
The different collectors and providers have also been formalised to have a unified standard for market information collection, production, packaging and dissemination. This is due to the efforts of different stakeholders together with Uganda Bureau of Statistics and support of development partners.
Partnerships make access, collection, packaging and dissemination of agribusiness market intelligence easier.
In turn, it necessitates players to position themselves and harness ICTs either as facilitating organisations, user/clients, promoters or collaborators to drive agribusiness. These include agro-input dealers, traders, processors, exporters, policy makers, researchers, consultants, as well as congregating organisations— farmer cooperatives and associations, financial institutions, support entities—NGOs, media and development partners, .
Source: The Monitor