164 | Agricultural Innovation in Developing East Asia
BOX E.1
Examples of e-service applications reaching smallholders in East Asia E-extension services. The design and execution of extension services differ between countries in East Asia. Most are public sector and cooperative driven, with an increasing role for the private sector and nongovernmental organizations. Several countries have experimented with e-extension, and examples have been documented elsewhere (World Bank 2011, 2012). Most e-extension services are subnational, nimble, and managed by nonpublic actors. An example of a public-driven comprehensive e-extension comes from China. China developed online agriculture information platforms to implement the 12316 hotline, a specialized agriculture information service system project of the Ministry of Agriculture; the service aims to provide fast and effective dissemination of information on agriculture technology, markets, and policies. Subsequently, the hotline was combined with websites, agriculture TV programs, mobile phone short messages, and multimedia messages to create a new public welfare 12316 Information Service System for Agriculture, Farmers and Rural Areas. The online version gets about 8.6 million visits daily, and the hotline takes more than 20 million phone calls annually. Approximately 80,000 “Farmer Friendly Information Stations” had also been built as of 2017; the aim is to cover 80 percent of China’s villages by the end of 2020 (ADB 2018). Weather services. In the era of climate change, targeted services that give farmers access to high-quality data on temperature, rainfall, wind, and soil moisture will be particularly important. Research shows that pest and disease forecasting services and weather-based crop insurance programs are among the fastest-growing agricultural climate services in the Asia region. Market information. Services that help farmers connect to markets and consumers more efficiently, or provide real-time pricing information on commodities, also help improve outcomes for farmers. For example, Indonesia has supported the launch of five apps that are meant to support farmers; one of the apps, Pantau Harga, allows users to track food prices across the country.
Integrated services. There is some Asia-based evidence of low-cost tools and collaborations between business and government diffusing knowledge and technology through the supply chain. Information and communication technology tools are delivering information and analytics to farmers. Vinaphone, a Vietnamese state telecom company, launched a service that turns mobile phones into “farm assistants,” providing agricultural information services (such as weather forecasts, plant disease alerts, guidelines on government policies, and advice on plant diseases) through a low-cost monthly package, delivered through social media. Similar services exist in Indonesia, through 8Villages. Collaborations with governments and larger companies can improve smallholders’ exposure to technology and knowledge. Formal collaborations can also help make product supply chains more visible to end-consumers. Indonesia’s Partnership for Indonesia Sustainable Agriculture, established in 2012, tightens collaboration between the state, companies, and smallholders to improve the production of commodities including cocoa, dairy, maize, palm oil, potatoes, rice, and soybean. Another Indonesia-based initiative, the Oil Palm Development Plasma Programme, works to improve farmers’ knowledge of oil palm cultivation and management best practices. Financing services. Access to finance is one of the fundamental components of agricultural extension efforts. Even the best innovations may not percolate through the supply chain if farmers are reluctant to borrow, or if banks refuse to lend. Asia has several promising initiatives in play, mostly in mobile money. USAID’s mStar project, operational in Bangladesh, sought to reduce reliance on physical cash transactions among smallholders by rolling out mobile services across the rice value chain. This enabled farmers to receive loans and payments from partners via mobile phones, with USAID using its convening power to work with mobile operators on reducing disbursement fees. There have also continued
