This is a guest post written by the Agro-Doc Team at Turkcell
GSM companies nowadays mean more than simple communications service providers. Customers seek value added services as a part of their commitment. The competition to provide such services becomes interesting when the customers are farmers. Turkcell, the leader of Turkish GSM market, has a business solution that allows every subscriber to receive personalised agricultural consulting 24/7. Farmers are already in line to make the best out of the service.
Service Features
Before the launch of the service, Turkcell had to find a solution to attract farmers that are extremely price sensitive. Instead of focusing on minor service fee cuts and tariff differentiations, Turkcell took the challenge to develop agricultural content for farmers that can be converted to additional earnings that can more than compensate for the service and tariff charges. However it was not an easy task at all. The content should be correct and oriented to every single customer so that each customer can benefit from the service without the risk of practicing unnecessary or inaccurate activities for their cultivation process. Therefore Agro-Doc had to improve its features and content to gain the confidence of mass farmer market.
The backbone and the starting point of Agro-Doc is periodic suggestions regarding best cultivation practices. Subscribers register the location of their fields, the crops they grow, the pH level of the soil, irrigation methodology they use; basically anything that defines their cultivation process. According to the information provided by subscribers, an expert system develops a seasonal cultivation program unique to each field of the farmer. Farmers can register as many fields as they can while if they lack information about their fields, they can always apply for a detailed soil analysis. Agro-Doc currently serves 40,000 farmers with more than 100 distinct produces.
The farmers of course have to deal with many other uncertainties to keep standards high. Weather is surely one of them. Launched in 2012, Agro-Doc was able to provide regional weather forecasts. Starting from last year, the service evolved to give village-based forecasts, rendering it more adaptable even to differences among neighboring settlements. Apart from daily weather forecasts, alarming changes in weather such as droughts and frosts, epidemic risks, market prices and government grants are conveyed to subscribers for appropriate locations and crops.
As a part of the farming experience, customers can have problems or sometimes require additional information. Turkcell Agro-Doc includes access to an Agricultural Support Line through which subscribers can consult anything to Agricultural Engineers. The service guarantees to give a helping hand within 48 hours.
In spite of having comprehensive benefits, it wasn’t easy to convince farmers that a GSM operator could solve their problems with a service based on SMS and call center support. Farmers have the tendency to rely on face to face interactions and suggestions on field. To meet the demand for close interaction, Turkcell invested in field trips and village events for its farmer customer base. All the written and verbal content was rebuilt to provide a warm and friendly tone as opposed to a formal way of communication that is directed to many other segments. Simultaneously more accurate village based weather forecasts and information received on site have been boosted as a part of the content, which improved the perception of Turkcell Agro-Doc as a reliable and fruitful agricultural service.
Cream of the Crop: Additional Yield
In order to evaluate the direct monetary gains of using the service, Turkcell had run a test for six months before its launch. Two farmers, one with highly respected credentials and another with relatively moderate credentials in terms of crop yield and quality had previously performed agricultural activities with the same level of machinery, equipment and labor force. The latter farmer, who strictly followed Agro-Doc activity suggestions, gained an extra 600 Turkish Lira (TL; ~280 USD) on 1 hectare of land compared to the former who completely relied on his own practice. This increase corresponds roughly to 10% of farmer’s average income.
Examples from real life users have emerged to support the test results. Sadri Tanrıkulu, who produces corn for silage used the Turkcell Agro-Doc Agricultural Support Line to ask about the most suitable seed types for his region. In addition to seed selection he followed the fertilization program that the service suggests during the season. Mr. Tanrıkulu claims to have a 300% increase in total yield compared to last year.
Another farmer, Hasan Zoplan, a raisin producer in the Aegean Region, took the frost warning into consideration and kept the drip irrigation system turned on overnight to save the vineyards from freezing. In comparison to his neighbors who were severely affected by frost, he managed to have 50% more yield during harvest. He reported that his extra yield correspond to an additional 10000 TL (4,675 USD) of earnings; the cost of the service is about 4 TL (~2 USD) per month.
For further information, visit www.turkcell.com.tr
View Agro-Doc and other mAgri products and services on the mAgri deployment tracker.