The FarmerNet project donor cycle ended in December 2010. Yet Fusion in collaboration with Strategic partners: SEEDS, ICTA, and Sabre Technologies are moving forward in 2011 to popularize the system with in rural farmer and trader communities.
The strategy for 2011, is to focus on clusters. Up to 2010, Fusion focused on mass scale awareness programs that attracted 200+ farmers in one place. Honest intention and motivation to use the system was evident in every farmer we interacted, yet actual usage (sending SMS) to the system, was somehow, not happened as expected.
In some cases, Fusion found that it was more to do with a bevy of complex social parameters coming in to play.
Viscous cycle of credit dependency from the intermediaries, and non exposure to technical know how for small scale farmers were seen as major barriers to penetrate.
To overcome this situation, Fusion worked out with SEEDS, to start a focused marketing campaign. We would select 3 districts with tech savvy SEEDS field coordinators. We have earmarked 3 districts, for the first quarter, and will be training the SEEDS coordinators to promote the solution. Very encouragingly SEEDS have seen FarmerNet as a complementary service in their solution package to rural micro finance beneficiary customer base. This will ensure a ready made customer segment using FarmerNet to increase their options for a better price, both farmers and traders.
From March 2011, a 6-month campaign will start focusing on 3 districts.
