Due to the greater degree of dependency on weather conditions, weather-shocks can put smallholder farmers’ food security and livelihood in danger at any time. Typical weather forecasts are usually at a regional scale. Often these forecasts do not come true for farmers’ specific locations. Moreover, farmers fail to translate the weather forecast for their circumstance e.g. how an adverse weather condition may affect their crops. They need to know what they have to do in their cornfields because of this high temperature. Even when they understand the effect of weather on their crop, it does not always help because their knowledge of best management practices in response to an adverse weather condition is limited. Moreover, many of their traditional knowledge of weather patterns are no more effective because of changing the climate.

To address this problem mPower developed a service that combines localized weather forecasts with specific crop management practices to generate highly customized agricultural advisory in the form of actionable advice for individual smallholder farmers. For this, mPower closely collaborated with agronomic experts to identify thresholds of adverse weather conditions for specific crops and climate-smart management practices to reduce or eliminate the effect of them. The weather forecasts for specific Upazila level is generated by downscaling data from Weather Research & Forecast (WRF) model to 4KMX4KM grid for specific weather parameters like temperature, humidity, rainfall, solar radiation that are critical for crops. The adverse weather parameters with specific threshold values were converted into algorithms. Our farmer profiling with specific information ensures that farmers get personalized advice. All these data are aggregated in our integrated IT platform that triggers farmer specific crop management advice. These alert messages are delivered 2 to 3 days ahead of an unfavorable weather condition to allow a farmer sufficient time to act.

https://www.mpower-social.com/agriculture.php

• Bangladesh
• Nepal (Republic of)

• Youth
• Women
• The poor
• Remote and rural communities

SHUFOLA can be scaled up and replicated across and beyond Bangladesh. We have tested the solution to Haor and Char regions of Bangladesh. Haor is a wetland eco-regions and Chars are remote river islands. The service’s ability to provide service in such extremely remote regions proves its replicability. We have also piloted the solution in Nepal for sugarcane farmers. Nepal being another LDC gives sufficient evidence of how versatility the service can be. Thus, the service can be replicated in other countries but it has to be preceded by certain level of research and development. On the other hand, the IT platform will automate the whole data management system and trigger farmer-specific agricultural advice without requiring manual intervention. This ensures that the service remains inexpensive while it can provide service at a great scale beyond geographical boundaries across multiple crops.

The aim of this service is to provide localized agro advisory in an inexpensive manner for subsistence farmer groups so that they can avail of the service at no cost. To sustain this advisory service achieving an operational breakeven is required. In achieving this breakeven we will make the service an integral part of agro-services in the agricultural ecosystem so that it benefits all the actors in the marketplace including farmers and agribusinesses. The service will take a B2B approach where input companies will pay for the service while farmers buying their products will get it for free. The other source of revenue for the service will be agribusinesses doing contract farming. They will avail the service for their contracted farmers for better production. Over time new features will be added to the service catering to different other needs of the farmers including information on the market price of agricultural produces, information on inputs, expert consultation, diagnosis of crop disease, etc. Adding different layers of other farmer-centric information services will ensure the continuing stickiness of the service among farmers and the natural growth of the number of subscribers.

SHUFOLA ensures access to information and knowledge among farming communities as per the vision of WSIS for an inclusive Information Society. The sharing of agricultural knowledge between leading crop experts and farmers is strengthened by SHUFOLA as it removes barriers to equitable access to information and facilitates access to public domain information through the use of assistive technologies. SHUFOLA ensures Information about advanced farming techniques of public research organizations is easily accessible via ICT medium to farmers and it's free and equitable for everyone who subscribed to the service. SHUFOLA strives to promote universal access with equal opportunities through knowledge dissemination about climate-smart agricultural practice through the e-Agriculture medium. But most importantly, SHUFOLA promotes WSIS values by using and deploying ICT based solutions with a view to creating benefits in smallholder farmers' professional life. By providing seed to seed management practice, SHUFOLA has been contributing to the sustainable production of food and reduce traditional barriers. SHUFOLA has been conducting continuous RCTs to adapt to beneficiary needs such as voice messages in local dialects and cultures and to achieve sustainable development through e-Agriculture.