#wefarm

WeFarm rakes in $13M to grow its marketplace and network for independent farmers

Huge networks like Facebook and LinkedIn have a huge gravitational force in the world of social media — the size of their audiences make them important platforms for advertising and those who want information (for better or worse) to reach as many people as possible. But alongside their growth, we’re seeing a lasting role for platforms and networks focused on more narrow special interests, and…

CNN recently published an article titled “The tech solutions to end global hunger”, [1]  a topic that is extremely relevant to the material being discussed in class. We are constantly finding ourselves updating and improving technology and applications on various platforms, but we typically find it only pertinent to our immediate environments. We’d be very hard-pressed to find someone nowadays who doesn’t have a smart-phone, or even access to a smart-phone, so we assume that new health apps come easily. What I appreciate from this article is that it address an entire population that we hardly think of when discussing health technology: farmers in Africa.

Roughly 70% of the world’s food comes from small, isolated farms that are typically smaller than 2 acres [1]. However, as important as these farms are, there are regular challenges faced by locations in African countries, from droughts to crop failures that can lead to famine. Philanthropist and businessman Bill Gates has been working on funding a range of projects that could assist these isolated sites using technology that was not previous available to them, particularly cell phones. A new service, WeFarm.org [2], a social network works as a peer-to-peer service, allows farmers to relay information or prompt questions based on their own experiences. If a farmer notices something strange about his crop, then he has the ability to reach out to an online community where an answer can be reached within minutes. WeFarm reports that more than 120,000 farmers are connected to the service and that more than 280,000 questions have been answered.

I decided to do my own research on the website itself (I would have downloaded the application but frankly, I don’t have any space on my phone).  The website itself is very clean and professional, with a live feed of questions asked and answered, farmers registered, and messages shared. There is also an interactive map that shows the connections between those asking the questions and answering them, a feature I thought really emphasized the scale of this project. Additionally, there is a live feed of questions and answers going on between farmers. From being on the website now, I can see that “Paul” wants to know: “Which type of plants are needed near the bee hives?”. To this, “Richard” recommends: “the trees around au [sic] hives should be those which produce more flowers and more necter [sic]”. Upon further investigation, the website offers links that allow user to get more information about the website, the team, and other services.

 Applications and websites like these are irrefutably the future of our participation in global health and communication. However, with all technological advances, there is always the issue of cost. There are many questions that arise from this idea that I personally thought of while researching. First of all, the obvious question of how these platforms (smart-phones and computers with access to the internet) would even get to these remote locations in the first place. Next would be the issue of maintaining an internet connection that is essential to use and upkeep. It’s always very easy to come up with solutions for issues, but the practicality and longevity of these projects is what keeps us from providing services to all.

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/23/health/tech-apps-solving-global-hunger-famine/index.html

How WeFarm is helping farmers share information via text across the globe

By Nixon Kanali, TechTrendsKE

Technology has become an integral part in the growth of most economies in the world. Most of the countries especially in Africa have agriculture as their most economic generators, faming and exporting farm produces in various parts of the world.

According to The Economist, crop yields in Africa are between one-third and one-half of the global average. This explains…

Some weeks ago we visited Nandi Hills, in the Western Kenya. A shocking green was waiting for us over there: the tea plantations are dominating the whole landscapes and for many kilometers you'll be surrounded by a geometrical carpet of differen green shades.

The reason of our presence there is related to WeFarm, a "pioneering social enterprise" which aims to enable peer to peer knowledge sharing about agriculture between different producers around the world.

WeFarm was about to launch their SMS platform in different localities of the Nandi Hills region when we reached there with our car, were twenty farmers were waiting for the training in the shadow of a zibibo tree.

We had the opportunity to speak with Camille, the local coordinator of the project. At the same time, we were sharing feelings with the six young graduated students that were coordinating the meeting between WeFarm and the farmers. We made several interviews to women who do family farming and tea plantations and we were able to start some interesting discussions with them about the expected results of ICTs in agriculture for the local problems affecting the sector, especially for women.

WeFarm is a SMS system that allow farmers to ask and answer questions about agriculture; the cost for a message is the price of a local message and they can ask info about any issue or information concerning agriculture.

More details will be available soon in our Agritools platform!

SomeOne/Else is working with the Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation on WeFarm, a knowledge-sharing platform that connects farmers in developing countries using SMS.

The service, which is in the design stage, will serve as a means of communication where there is poor internet coverage and smartphone penetration.

SomeOne/Else, the digital arm of consultancy SomeOne, says the system is effectively ‘the internet for the people without internet.’

WeFarm members can ask questions and share farming tips and advice by sending a local SMS message. 

The message arrives at a centre of volunteer translators - possibly at the Essex University language department - who then pass the question on to a farmer with appropriate knowledge in another part of the world.

On the ground, ‘extension workers’ in Tanzania for example, will be communicating with farmers on foot and will have smart-phones and iPads to aid communication.

Warren Hutchinson, experience design director at SomeOne/Else says ‘It means that for the first time a coffee farmer in Peru can ask questions, and share tips and advice with other coffee farmers from all over the world.’

Hutchinson says he is working on the design of an interface using SMS, and may use USSD, a type of SMS that allows real time chat sequences.

In addition he says, ‘We’ll need to design a responsive website for desktop, tablet and mobile which the translators and the extension workers can use – but we don’t want all the knowledge locked up in the website – that’s what the SMS is for.’

The WeFarm brand development and pilot projects were started by Airside in 2010 and since the consultancy closed in 2012, Airside co-founder Nat Hunter has remained involved. 

Hunter invited SomeOne/Else to pitch two month ago and the consultancy is now working alongside technical partners Manifesto and the Conker Group.

This follows three years of work by the Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation which conceived the idea and has been leading the project, as well as developing a pilot and proof of concept work.

The design is expected to be finished in the first quarter of 2014 and the service is expected to launch in in Haiti, Kenya, Peru and Tanzania in the second quarter of next year.