This is the first blog in a series of posts on insights and highlights from the mFarmer initiative. Learn more about the individual services we worked with by reading our mFarmer case studies.

mFarmer second blog post: Delivering agronomy information through mobile
mFarmer third blog post: Choosing your delivery channels
mFarmer fourth blog post: Delivering market price information through mobile

The typical Agri VAS user is a young, male small holder farmer who wants to treat farming as a business. While service providers are hitting an important demographic, more work could be done to make services appealing to women farmers, who are likely to make up an increasing proportion of smallholders in developing countries as more men find work in urban environments.

These are the typical characteristics of the majority of Agri VAS users:

Livelihoods:

• Owns a small farm (2-hectare or 5 acre)
• Depends on agriculture as main source of income
• Grows crops for domestic consumption and sell surplus

Demographic:

• Under the age of 29
• Less likely to be in poverty than the wider population
• Majority of users are men, but women can become more active users

Livelihoods
The highest proportion of Agri VAS users are the smallholder farmers¹ who grow crops mainly for domestic consumption and sell their surplus in the market: 82% of customers surveyed at the Airtel Kilimo baseline, 45% of users at the mKisan midline, 74% of customers surveyed for the Tigo Kilimo midline and 68% of users interviewed for the Sènèkèla baseline said they were farmers or herders. Those who engage entirely in commercial farming made up a relatively small proportion of the customer base.

Users of Agri VAS services may also be traders², casual labourers³, office workers⁴ or extension workers. Salaried workers may use Agri VAS to support their part-time farming activities to generate a secondary source of income, while extension workers may use the information from Agri VAS to complement the knowledge they receive during training. Students, who comprised 7% of mKisan’s user base at the baseline, may also register to the service looking to use the information for their studies.

Demographic
Most Agri VAS users across the services are under the age of 29. These users are often more mobile-savvy than older users – Agri VAS can thus have a large impact on the youth market and spark a movement of early adopters among a younger generation of farmers.

• 60% of all users at the Tigo Kilimo midline were under 25 – this proportion was significantly higher in the repeat user segment, suggesting younger users are accessing the service more often.
• The majority of customers profiled for the mKisan baseline were below the age of 29 (67%).

Agri VAS users across the services are generally less likely to be in poverty than the wider population. This demographic has a higher percentage of phone ownership, greater literacy rates and levels of education, and more disposable income to spend on market-based services. Higher levels of formal education and literacy among repeat users may also be factors that contribute to a better understanding of instructions, helping users overcome the bottlenecks in the early stages of the customer journey.

• Around half of Sènèkèla customers at the baseline (48%) fall below the national poverty line (FCFA 395 (US$0.28) per day) compared to 57% at the national level. Over two thirds of repeat Sènèkèla users have a formal education compared to less than half of trial users surveyed.
• Less than 5% of Airtel Kilimo users surveyed at the baseline were below the national poverty line in Kenya (KSh 52.08 (US$0.56)/day for rural area) compared to approximately 42-49% of the population of Kenya.
• Results from the baseline survey suggest that the poverty rate among the Tigo Kilimo customers at the baseline is only 13% (using Tanzania’s national poverty line), but around 30% in the wider population. However, the repeat user segment surveyed for the Tigo Kilimo midline contained less formally educated and less tertiary educated users than other segments, suggesting that voice based Agri VAS can play a role for less educated farmers.

A majority of Agri VAS users are men, but the male-to-female user ratio varies across the services: our most recent data suggests that, women comprised 40% of Airtel Kilimo customers, 37% of Tigo Kilimo customers, 17% of Sènèkèla customers and 9% of mKisan customers. This disparity can be explained by the lack of gender equality within these wider contexts. Women in India typically have lower levels of literacy and are less likely to own mobile phones or land. Women in Tanzanian society are traditionally less likely to have access to capital and land, and may therefore be more cost-conscious than men in how they seek information. Despite their underrepresentation among Agri VAS users, women are active users of Agri VAS and are more likely to become repeat users in some cases.

• Despite the fact that women represent only 17% of the Sènèkèla customer base, women comprise more than one third of all calls. Moreover, women of the repeat use segment generate almost 50% of calls of the repeat users while representing only 25% of the segment.
• Women made up 37% of all Tigo Kilimo users at the midline, but 41% of the repeat users segment, suggesting women are slightly more likely to become repeat users.

For more detail on how to design mobile agriculture services for women, see our joint toolkit with the Connected Women team.

Is this your experience of Agri VAS customers, or do you have a different story? Please leave any comments below, or contact us by email: [email protected]. Stay tuned for more insights from the mFarmer initiative over the coming weeks.

<sup>1. according to the UN FAO’s 2-hectare or 5 acre classification of a small farm
2. 1% of mKisan, 2% of Sènèkèla, and 14% of Tigo Kilimo regular users at each baseline; A study on Airtel Kilimo reveals similar findings with a small number of non-farmer customers earn a primary income from trading.
3. 11% of mKisan users
4. 6% of mKisan users</sup>