IICD supported project: Information System for Innovation and Competiveness of Small Farmers

Countries: Bolivia [BO]
Sectors: agriculture livelihood

Summary

Lacking information between the differences actors in the agriculture value chain hampers the free market system. With all actors operating separately makes the position of small producers less competitive. Therefore producers need to adopt more a better structured and coordinated information strategy. ICT represent a key input to plan and implement an information system providing producers with useful information on production technologies and markets, enhancing their position in the market.

Update

Updated: 2005-08-05

The NGO CEPAC started the implementation of a project with ICT features
similar to the AOPEB projects. It includes a information centre in the
region of Ichile near Santa Cruz, feeded with information from
headquarters in Santa Cruz. The focus is on the marketing and
production information on the principal products produced in the region
of Ichile. In addition, a radio programme is developed to promote the
information services provided through the information centre. The
project will provide a direct link between small farmers at community
level and market and production information provided at the local and
national level. Apart from the inauguration in the first rural
information centre, the first training sessions for end users have been
realized. As for information services, the project developed a price
and input database and published a monthly bulletin with key
information on production methods and marketing outlets.

Introduction

The ICT Roundtable in Bolivia showed that ICTs are a component of significant priority for the planning and for the strategic performance of the productive sector. Thus, it is extremely necessary to endow the producers with a system that provides them with useful, timely and exact information to help them improve their production and strengthen their marketing position. 

NGO CEPAC started implementation of a project with similar ICT features similar to the AOPEB projects, including one information centre in the region of Ichile, close to Santa Cruz feeded with information from headquarters in Santa Cruz.

Objectives

The mission of this project is to benefit small producers, permanently in need of information about services and markets. Nevertheless, the system can be enlarged to serve other sectors, like medium-sized farms or even big agricultural companies. It is easy to see that there is a potential market that can be gradually expanded if we are able to increase our experience; if we can improve the quality of our services, if we put in practice the necessary strategies to guarantee the sustainability of the system. All this would allow us to develop a crossed subsidy for low income sectors.

The Project has to do with four sub-systems:
(1)Technological facilities, that include the setting up of an ICT Server in the city of Santa Cruz, of a sub-center for communications and ICT training in Yapacaní and of three communication sub-centers in each local government in the province of Ichilo. All these centers will perform the registration and processing of information, they will assemble “packets” of information, they will create the virtual library and provide the venues for the ICT training activities.
(2) Information Registering, that includes the creation of an information system, able to collect data, analyze them and construe their meaning. This would be of great help to achieve technological innovation and to enhance the producers’ competitiveness as the access to information about input suppliers, service providers and markets would be much easier. It would also facilitate the access to the web Page.
(3) Information Services, enabling information to reach the final users through the radio, through printed material, by means of face-to-face communication (community promoters) or virtually, in the Webpage.
(4) Training, ICT and Computer Science training provided to final users, promoters and people in general.

Planned outputs

• Farmers and their families informed on innovative production technologies;
• Farmers and their families have access to market and marketing information;
• Associations manage development; competitive strategies for production at community level

Development Impacts

The project will assist IICD in reaching poor farmers in rural areas, thereby directly contributing to the mission of IICD. The project will also be able to draw lessons from similar projects already operational in Bolivia and in other countries through Local IN and Thematic Networks. The project owner has a long and solid track record in implementation of local projects. The project is expected to contribute to a combination of traditional (printed bulletins and local radio) and modern ICTs (Internet) to reach poor and rural end users with ICTs.

Management and organisation

CEPAC, being the owner of the project has the possibility to manage the system, as it is responsible for the key component of the project, the generation and production of information. The communication sub-systems will depend on the selection of the target clients.

CEPAC - Centro de Promoción Agropecuaria Campesina (Agricultural Promotion Center for the Farmer Community), is a private Institution working for development, a non-profit organization that started its activities in October 1990. It supports farmer families, social organizations and local governments to improve agricultural production. CEPAC wants his activities to be a valuable contribution for the generation of knowledge and for the replicability of successful experiences. CEPAC is the owner of the project, the responsible for the development of ICT technologies and for the administration of financial resources.

Market and finance

The target group of the Project are the Familiar Productive Units (FPU) organized in Associations of small and medium-sized producers in the province of Ichilo, including the municipal governments of Buena Vista, San Carlos and Yapacaní. The number of FPU in the Province of Ichilo is more or less 7,000, all of them devoted to agriculture. 20% of these FPU are affiliated to different organizations, in other words, about 1,400 FPU. This project intends to reach 500 FPU a year, 1,000 FPU by the end of the second year of implementation.

The Project receives financial support from CORDAID-Holland that covers most of the budget for the first and second year. Starting from the first year of implementation, the project foresees to sell its services to subscribers and to other parties concerned. Nevertheless, and in spite of the income produced by the selling of the information services, from the third year on finances have an unfavorable balance. So, some strategies have been designed to try to redress the situation. One of them is to ask for collaboration to municipal governments. The other strategy focuses on covering the financial gap with financial resources coming from the budgets of the programmes that are currently being executed. So, the programmes “Food Security” and “Fruit Growing Plan” will use financial resources from their own budgets to cover totally or in part the financial gap of the project. This strategy is supported by CORDAID. Finally, another strategy has to do with obtaining new funding from international cooperation or even to extend the services of the project to other sectors such as Health.

Results

Ever since the beginning, the project has been promoted in different kinds of associations and in Municipal Governments. This allowed us to learn a lot about the kind of information that was being demanded by our target groups, general, specialized or selected information. The Communication and ICT Training Center, TIC@Yapacaní has been set up in CEPAC facilities in Yapacaní and it has been provided with all the necessary equipment. Investments are being done according to the schedule. So far, the 50% of the equipment for the project has been purchased.

The Project has succeeded in attracting partners from target groups previously identified: producers in different communities, producers’ organizations, producers organized in small groups and several other associations. All of them are willing to receive the benefits of ICT services. We have already received 56 applications to provide promoters with ICT training in different communities and associations in Buena Vista, San Carlos, San Juan and Yapacaní.

We are already broadcasting our radio programme “Vamos Al mercado” (Let’s go to the market). So far, 113 releases of the programme have been broadcasted, twice a day, containing information about the prices of agricultural products in different markets. We have also produced a newsletter TIC@gro-Mercado with useful information for agricultural producers. This newsletter is also important to promote our virtual library and also agribusiness opportunities and the services offered by the ICT training Center. Three issues of the newsletter have already been published and we have distributed 1864 copies. We have a database and a virtual library (BiblioTIC) where we organize all the information downloaded from the web.

We have provided training to agents representing eight farming communities and seven associations (workers of the dairy industry, coffee growing, fruit growers, beekeepers, citrus fruits growers, cattle raisers, craftsmen, etc). We have trained 22 promoters up to now. Moreover, we have trained 20 applicants and empowered them to act as ICT promoters in different communities and associations in Yapacaní. At the moment, 38 more are attending classes for the second and third training modules. These people represent many communities and associations in Yapacaní, San Carlos and Buena Vista; twenty-three of them are men and fifteen are women. The project has organized a modular training system with both theoretical and practical instruction. The methodology used encourages participation. A lot of training material has been prepared: Three handbooks STEP BY STEP, illustrations, The Promoter’s Handbook, a notebook: “My daily Register”, another notebook: “My organization thinks…” and another, “The producers demand…”

Frame agreements have been signed with the local governments of Buena Vista and San Juan. After that, workshops were immediately organized to let everybody know about the activities of the project.

Project Owner : Centro de Promocion Agropecuario Campesino (CEPAC)

Contact Organisation : IICD