The Grameen Foundation, with a $4.7 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is expanding a farmer information initiative in Uganda. It’s called the Community Knowledge Worker (CKW) initiative and uses cell phones to share important crop related information. The CKWs interact with local farmers to provide key data for successful crops. A successful pilot included GIS:
During a successful nine-month pilot, which concluded in August 2009, 40 CKWs in Uganda’s Mbale and Bushyeni districts had more than 14,000 interactions with smallholder farmers. They conducted 6,000 surveys to help organizations such as the World Food Program and IITA (http://www.iita.org) better understand farmer needs. IITA also created Geographic Information Survey (GIS) maps showing crop disease outbreaks, the impact of farmers adopting recommended disease control methods, and other important information for farmers and scientists. Throughout the pilot, farmers routinely sought out CKWs to obtain information to help them treat pests, get accurate weather forecasts for planting, and earn more for their crops. For example, a farmer who had lost his groundnut crop because the rains came late and his seeds died contacted his local CKW to access regular weather forecasts so that he could plan the rest of his planting season and preserve his livelihood.
