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RUNNING HEAD: Social Media and Smartphones for Agricultural Extension in Pakistan

Social Media and Smartphones for Agricultural Extension in Pakistan

Matthew E. Nieminski

Vangelis A. Soriano

Florida International University

Social Media and Smartphones for Agricultural Extension in Pakistan 2

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................ 3

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4

Background ..................................................................................................................................... 6

Practical Discussion ........................................................................................................................ 9

I. Transferring knowledge to farmers and fostering development of skills ............................ 9

II. Bridging the gap between knowledge acquisition and adoption ....................................... 11

III. Providing relevant, useful, and timely information for decision-making support ......... 13

NOKIA LIFE: an exemplary mobile phone application for information dissemination ....... 15

IV. Gathering agricultural data for extension ....................................................................... 17

V. Sharing user-generated agricultural data and information ................................................. 18

Analysis......................................................................................................................................... 19

Way Forward ................................................................................................................................ 21

Remaining needs ....................................................................................................................... 21

Future trends .............................................................................................................................. 22

Bibliography .................................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.


Executive Summary

Pakistan, a South Asian country, is primed and ready for a dramatic increase in

agricultural extension capacities. Social media platforms, applications, and smartphone

technologies can greatly facilitate and aid agricultural extension in Pakistan over the next five

years (2015-2020). Current research indicates that smartphone technologies and social media

have outstanding potential for utility in providing need and demand-based agricultural extension

services to farmers in Pakistan. Agricultural knowledge and skills, information for decision-

making support, as well as participatory empowerment of farmers can all be administered,

facilitated, and delivered through social media platforms and smartphone technologies.

Furthermore, analysis shows that due to the continuous and rapid evolution of smartphones and

the development of infrastructure designed to facilitate information sharing and communications

technologies, much of this potential is yet to be tapped and creative applications abound.


Introduction

Pakistan is a country with a general population of 199,085,847. Estimates predict as

many as 11.6 million Pakistanis are currently active on social media, posting or logging in at

least once a month on Facebook.1 The country has at least 92,394 social media users who

subscribe to the fairly active and all encompassing “Social Media of Pakistan” Facebook page.23

Additionally, more than one third (35%) of the country’s land is utilized for agriculture with an

additional 27.6% classified as “arable land.”4 The country’s massive population, which is only

forecasted to increase, combined with the large percentage of land dedicated to farming or

potential farmland primes the region for an agricultural revolution. Social media and smartphone

technologies can play an important role in this process.

While previously deemed merely a “trend” or a “fad,” social media platforms and

applications have proved to be powerful tools and are here to stay. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

and other smartphone technologies have effectively been used in a broad spectrum of

applications. Groups such as “Digital Green” and “Access Agriculture” have successfully

pioneered smartphone technologies and their application to agricultural extension. Smartphone

technology has greatly evolved since their prevalence and mass distribution in 1993. In the 26

years they have existed, smartphones and smartphone technology have evolved from devices

capable of intelligence, data processing and visual display screens to portable encyclopedias and

data and information sharing devices. With proper internet connection, smartphones allow a user

to access information on accessing market data, tracking weather and natural phenomena, and

1 Pakistan Advertisers’ Society. “A Snapshot of Pakistan’s Social Media Analytics – December 2013

[Infographics].” December 2013. http://www.pas.org.pk/a-snapshot-of-pakistans-social-media-analytics-december-

2013-infographics/ 2 Central Intelligence Agency. “Pakistan” The World Factbook. Page last updated 10 December 2015. 3 Facebook. “Social Media of Pakistan.” Last Updated 25 July 2013. https://www.facebook.com/Pakissan/ Retrieved

01 JAN 2016. 4 Central Intelligence Agency. “Pakistan” The World Factbook. Page last updated 10 December 2015.


assessing crop forecast and predictions. The broad if not infinite use of social media platforms

serves an important precedent. Social media platforms can effectively be used by rural farmers,

given the right strategy, tactics, and approach. Smartphone technologies and social media

applications can serve very legitimate uses and can benefit the international community.

Agricultural extension in Pakistan can receive a technological advantage from such social media

applications and smartphone technologies. The Pakistani agricultural extension campaign has

many uses, from awareness to practical applications.


Background

Social media applications and smartphone technologies in the Pakistani agricultural

industry is not unprecedented. There are currently a variety of social media applications and

platforms being used for agricultural extension in Pakistan. In 2003, farmers and agricultural

enthusiasts in Pakistan created the “Agriculture and Farming in Pakistan” Facebook Page. While

the community oriented page is primitive in its content and only garnered 1,332 “likes” during

the highlight of its tenure and publication, the page was last updated nearly three years ago.5 The

basic social media page serves as an important tool regarding the trend analysis and highlighting

the desire for social media based farming applications in the South Asian country.

Additionally, farmers and agricultural enthusiasts created a web portal with the intent of

“Connecting [the Pakistani] Agri-Community for Better Farming.”6 The consortium webpage

provided links to web-based farming resources to interested parties in an effort to expand,

increase, and improve upon the practice and industry. Again, the initiative proves there is a

foundational or underlying desire for a social media or technological based agricultural

campaign.

Most recently, the “Pakistan Agricultural Research” Facebook page maintains 4,201 likes

and remains fairly active.7 The same organization maintains a Twitter page with 438 Tweets, 125

following, and a mere 126 Followers. The page was last updated in 2014.8

The competing commercial “AgriHub Pakistan” Twitter page contains similar statistics

with only 32 tweets, 116 following, and 111 followers. While the commercial page has not been

5 Facebook. “Agriculture and Farming in Pakistan.” Last Updated 25 July 2013.

https://www.facebook.com/Pakissan/ Retrieved 01 JAN 2016. 6 Pakissan (2015). “Connecting Agri-Community for Better Farming.” http://www.pakissan.com. Retrieved 03 JAN

2016. 7 Facebook. “Pakistan Agricultural Research.” Last Updated 25 July 2013. https://www.facebook.com/ Retrieved 09

MAR 2016. 8 Twitter. “Pakistan Agricultural Research.” https://twitter.com/par_cotton. Retrieved 09 MAR 2016.


undated since July 2015, the page intended to be Pakistan’s first agricultural “company to

provide [sic] Pakistani farmers and growers with the right products, the right advice, at the right

price.”9 While commercially driven and motivated, the marketing initiative and campaign

demonstrates further potential and social media applications.

Lastly, a basic search of YouTube for the terms “Pakistani [and] farming” yields about

56,900 results.10 Additional searches for animal husbandry and various agricultural practices and

tactics also yield bountiful results. The YouTube search results demonstrate another dimension

of the Pakistan agricultural industry’s online presence and social media footprint. Users are not

only seeking articles, Facebook posts, messages in 140 characters or less, and images, they are

seeking practical videos in order to learn new skills and apply the lessons learned.

Pakistan is not alone in its efforts; neighboring Afghanistan has similar initiatives. The

“E-Afghan Ag” Facebook page is updated more frequently and garners 15,216 likes.11 In an

effort to grow optimism and awareness in the country, the group posts and publishes success

stories from visitors of the group page and portal. Similarly, neighboring India has many social

media applications targeting the farming community. The Institute of Urban Farming and

Sustainability in India has 4004 likes,12 and the Organic Farming Association of India has more

than double the exposure with 8963 likes.13 Arguably, these sites are being frequented more than

their Pakistani government counterparts. This can be attributed to their ease of use, mass

availability, and worldwide notoriety.

9 Twitter. “AgriHub Pakistan.” https://twitter.com/AgriHubPakistan Retrieved 09 MAR 2016. 10 YouTube. “Search Results: Pakistani Farming.”

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pakistani+farming 11 https://www.facebook.com/E-Afghan-Ag-359546770798345/ 12 https://www.facebook.com/IUFSIndia/ 13 https://www.facebook.com/Organic-Farming-Association-of-India-114460191965192/


While there are numerous attempts to consolidate and aggregate information on Pakistani

farming techniques and practices, all of the networking attempts face an uphill battle. Analytic

figures and projections estimate only about 15.9 percent of the Pakistani population, or 30

million people, regularly use or have regular access to the internet.14 Already an alarmingly low

statistic, inaccessibility is magnified by the fact that “majority of the [rural] households were

landless and 85 percent of them belonged to lower income group.”15 This suggests impoverished

farmers with limited internet access remain a fraction of the Pakistani population with regular

internet access.

As noted in the “Pakistan Economic and Social Review” journal, “Agriculture sector of

Pakistan is based on traditional methods of production.”16 In addition to the lack of

communication infrastructure and internet accessibility, there will be an added challenge of

convincing very traditional farmers, many of which adhere to Islamic agricultural practices, to

embrace modern technologies and social media applications in order to further agricultural

extension.17 A paradigm shift of such proportions is arguably more difficult than expanding the

internet and communications infrastructure and distributing smartphones with social media

applications and technologies. These applications are not limited to smartphones. As an

alternative to social media, there is a growing movement to outfit “lower tech” cell phones with

“green” SIM cards, allowing for more accessibility.18 This movement allows rural farmers

14 Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000-2012", International Telecommunications Union (Geneva), June

2013, retrieved 12 MAR 16. 15 Akram, Waqar; Naz, Irum, Ali, Sadia. “An Empirical Analysis of Household Income in Rural Pakistan: Evidences

from Tehsil Samundri.” http://pu.edu.pk/images/journal/pesr/PDF-

FILES/5%20AKRAM%20An%20Analysis%20of%20Household%20Income%20in%20Rural%20Pakistan.pdf 16 Akram, Waqar; Naz, Irum, Ali, Sadia. “An Empirical Analysis of Household Income in Rural Pakistan: Evidences

from Tehsil Samundri.” http://pu.edu.pk/images/journal/pesr/PDF-

FILES/5%20AKRAM%20An%20Analysis%20of%20Household%20Income%20in%20Rural%20Pakistan.pdf 17 Ahmad, Husna. “Islamic Farming: A Toolkit for Conservation Agriculture.” Global One.

http://www.arcworld.org/downloads/Islamic-Farming-Toolkit.pdf 18 USAID. “IKSL’S Green Sim Card.” ICT and AG Profile. http://pdf.usaid.gov/pdf_docs/PA00J7R3.pdf


without such technology to still access the information that would facilitate agriculture

extension.

There are various previous attempts at organizing the Pakistani agricultural industry as

well as the agricultural industry of neighboring and regional countries into a web-based and

accessible platform. In addition to minimum exposure, the forefathers of Pakistani social media

applications focusing on agricultural extension face the challenge of expanding the internet and

communications infrastructure of the South Asian country. The majority of the rural farming

population belongs to the lower income group and do not have regular access to the internet or

social media applications. Despite the logistical and infrastructure based challenges in

implementing a social media based agricultural extension campaign, the previously attempted

social media initiatives and campaigns have failed and others dwindle with their posts,

publications, and relevancy. The aforementioned social media campaigns demonstrate the

Pakistani agricultural industries desire and readiness to have technological based campaign to

expand and extend the agricultural industry. The South Asian country and Pakistani agricultural

population is primed for technological based expansion and eventual economic growth.

Practical Discussion

Evaluating the potential uses of social media and smartphone technology for agricultural

extension in Pakistan over the next five years (2015-2020).

I. Transferring knowledge to farmers and fostering development of skills

By helping bridge the gap between content creators, extension agents, and farmers,

smartphone technology has the capacity to make agricultural knowledge more accessible and

readily available than ever before. Smartphone applications are an ideal medium by which


agricultural extension agencies and organizations can disseminate agricultural knowledge to

farmers owing to their simplicity and versatility. In addition to being useful tools in face-to-face

extension, these applications are easily distributable to all smartphone owners through the

internet or mobile network operators (MNOs) and can be customized in virtually every way,

providing endless possibilities in which content can be provided. For instance, web-based

smartphone applications can be used to provide farmers ready access to knowledge bases such as

Agropedia—a comprehensive “one stop shop” for content related to Indian agriculture.19

Furthermore, the robust capabilities of smartphones allow content to be provided in a manner

that is more easily understandable and applicable by farmers. In addition to text and audio,

smartphones allow agricultural knowledge to be disseminated through the use of tools such as

interactive maps and localized videos.

An excellent example demonstrating the potential of using videos can be seen in the work

of the non-profit international development organization Digital Green. In partnership with local

organizations, Digital Green engages with rural communities in South Asia and Sub-Saharan

Africa and empowers them to produce localized videos sharing knowledge on improved

agricultural practices, livelihoods, health, and nutrition. Not only are the communities involved

in the production of videos, they are also involved in dissemination and provide accompanying

training to fellow community members.20

Given the above, smartphones can be used by farmers to watch videos produced by

content creators, such as Digital Green, in order to gain agricultural knowledge and develop

skills. Better yet, smartphones can be employed in a similar initiative in Pakistan. Extension

19 "About Us." Agropedia - About Us. Accessed March 25, 2016. http://agropedia.iitk.ac.in/content/about-us.

20 "Digital Green." DigitalGreen. Accessed March 24, 2016. https://www.digitalgreen.org/about/.


agents can train farmers and other community members to create instructive videos using their

smartphones and to disseminate them over online networks or directly to the phones of others

through near-field communication. Doing so would not only promote the transfer of agricultural

knowledge among farmers in the community, but also empower farmers to help others develop

agricultural skills.

Whereas smartphone applications enable the transfer of knowledge primarily from formal

content creators, social media allow farmers to transfer agricultural knowledge directly to their

fellow farmers. Farmers can easily access social media, such as forums, blogs, social networking

sites, and video-sharing services through computers or, more practically, smartphones, thus

allowing them to share and have ready access to content such as best practices provided by

farmers from their own communities. Although social media has vast potential in knowledge

dissemination, its use for this purpose has hardly received attention from agricultural research

institutions.21 It is possible to facilitate and encourage the use of social media among farmers for

knowledge acquisition and dissemination by integrating social media sharing features such as

“share to Facebook” in smartphone applications developed for agricultural extension services.

Doing so will not only improve access to social media among farmers, but also greatly help build

a culture of participatory knowledge-sharing among members of the community.

II. Bridging the gap between knowledge acquisition and adoption

One of the major challenges in agricultural extension is how to foster the adoption and

adaptation of agricultural knowledge and skills by farmers in rural communities. Although

researchers have developed a plethora of agricultural content, none of it would be able to bear

21 "Trends in ICT/ICM." Edited by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed March 25, 2016.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/019/i3557e/i3557e.pdf.


fruit if it were not successfully transferred to those who need it the most. Fortunately, social

media and smartphone technology have great potential in providing solutions through initiatives

such as the Agriculture Knowledge Management System (AKMS) implemented in coastal

Bangladesh in 2006. In the AKMS, educated youths from local communities were trained by the

local agricultural organization partner, the Padma Research and Development Organization, to

become what Sharbendu Banerjee calls “knowledge brokers.” Knowledge brokers are equipped

with skills in system navigation, knowledge sourcing, and community engagement, able to

integrate into a multi-stakeholder knowledge flow structure comprised of organizations,

knowledge sources, as well as communication strategies. 22,23 Firstly, these knowledge brokers

noted the various agricultural knowledge and information-related needs of farmers, such as ideal

crops to plant given varying climate conditions, the most resilient seed varieties, appropriate

tillage, irrigation, harvesting techniques, as well as access to market-related information.

Afterward, the brokers used laptops to search the needed information online in a database

compiled in the Bengali language by the local partner organization. If the information in the

database were insufficient, brokers contacted other national and international agricultural

organizations through the local organizational partner. Once found, the content is provided in a

manner personalized and understandable to the farmers at affordable prices initially face-to-face,

and later on using mobile phones. Additionally, the flow of information in the AKMS is not only

one-way, but also flows from farmers back to knowledge brokers and partner organizations in

22 Banerjee, Sharbendu. "Mobile Telephony in Agriculture: Unlocking Knowledge Capital of the Farmers." Edited

by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed March 24, 2016. http://www.fao.org/docrep/019/i3557e/i3557e.pdf.

23 Braun, Patrice, and Faisal Islam. ICT-Enabled Knowledge Brokering For Farmers in Coastal Areas of

Bangladesh. PDF. Manchester: University of Manchester, 2012.


the form of feedback, thus helping extension organizations track the transfer of knowledge and

the status of implementation.

A similar community-based initiative implemented in rural communities in Pakistan has

the potential to be highly beneficial for the adoption of agricultural knowledge and skills. Social

media and smartphone technology have allowed for on-demand access to agricultural knowledge

with such an ease that even community youths can be trained to use them. Furthermore, the

proliferation of mobile broadband technology would eventually obviate dependence on wired

access to the internet, thus allowing for information to be searched anywhere at any time. Mobile

broadband technology can also help brokers better monitor processes, such as transfer of

knowledge and implementation, by allowing them to gather information in real-time and keep

records in online databases. Adoption of knowledge and skills is further facilitated by the fact

that these educated youths are themselves members of the communities and therefore have the

population’s trust and respect. Even more, these youths speak the language of the farmers in

need and are acutely aware of local cultural elements that may be relevant to adoption and

adaptation. Though these youths are not professionals per se, social media and smartphone

technology can allow them to become their communities’ de facto agricultural extension agents,

which is especially beneficial given that agents cannot be physically present at each community

at all times.

III. Providing relevant, useful, and timely information for decision-making

support

The traditional model for providing agricultural information to farmers typically flows in

one direction: from content creators such as research institutions, to extension agents, and finally

to farmers. According to Ajit Maru, the problems with this model include the fact that it is much


more input-intensive and therefore inefficient, and that it is too general of an approach, failing to

accommodate for the fact that farmers often have problems or questions that are unique to their

particular situation.24 However, social media and smartphone technology offer a solution to this

challenge in enabling the transformation of the flow of agricultural information from one that is

linear and passive to one that is truly on-demand, customized, and interactive – and thus

significantly more useful for decision-making support.

To understand the benefit of smartphone technology in the provision of agricultural

information, it is important to briefly contrast its utility from that of basic and feature mobile

phones. Basic mobile phones are limited to functions based on voice response and short

messaging service (SMS), and are thus restricted to multicasting, call center services, and short

message responses. Information provision is therefore greatly limited not only in terms of the

types of information provided, but also in terms of availability—call center and message

response agents are not guaranteed to be available at the time that farmers are. Feature phones,

on the other hand, are phones that have rudimentary multimedia and mobile internet features, and

are capable of providing access to additional services offered by mobile network operators.

Despite being a sizable improvement over basic phones, they lack the advanced capabilities of

smartphones and their technical limitations still largely restrict them to linear models of

information provision. In contrast, smartphones have robust capabilities that effectively make

them handheld computers—imbuing them with the processing capacity and versatility of a

personal computer with the mobility of handheld device.

The capabilities of smartphone technology therefore allow farmers to have truly on-

demand access to all existing agricultural information. Individuals and institutions alike create

24 Maru, Ajit. "The Emerging Contours of New Agricultural Development." Edited by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed

March 24, 2016. http://www.fao.org/docrep/019/i3557e/i3557e.pdf.


web-based smartphone applications utilizing virtually all types of agricultural information

resources to provide content: centralized databases, decision-support systems, knowledge-based

systems, map-based systems, and audio- and video-based services, to name a few. Smartphone

applications, therefore, allow farmers to have direct access to all of these information resources

in a way that is easily understandable and readily usable. Additionally, smartphone technology

enables the provision of information that is directly customized to farmers’ needs given that it

has none of the limitations inherent in the previous generations of mobile technologies.

Presently, all types of information have the potential to be instantly available in various forms

through a simple search function in a smartphone application or a web browser – whether the

solution to a unique problem, local market prices and stocks, meteorological information, or

natural disaster and pest outbreak information. As discussed below, the feature phone application

NOKIA LIFE presents itself as a solid example to emulate and to improve upon.

NOKIA LIFE: an exemplary mobile phone application for information dissemination

NOKIA LIFE is a feature phone application created by Nokia for the Indian agricultural

sector with the intention of bridging the information gap that is present among the stages of

agricultural production. As such, the purpose of the application is to disseminate agricultural

information personalized to individual farmers. Its features include automated and on-demand

provision of information on local market prices, local news, relevant government schemes and

subsidies, wide-ranging and localized consultation on crops, and meteorological conditions.


What is notable about NOKIA LIFE, however, is that it was designed with the

characteristics of an efficient information dissemination channel in mind, described below in

verbatim from a report by the FAO25:

Accessibility: accessible by most farmers without additional effort or travel

Personalization: customizable to the needs of individual farmers

Localization: adaptable to local needs such as local language, specific crops and

livestock breeds, soil and weather conditions

Usability: easily understood and usable by most farmers

Low cost of access: cost-effective to both the information provider and farmers

Aggregation: integrating and leveraging knowledge available with various public and

private sector bodies

Another notable feature of NOKIA LIFE is how Nokia ensures that the application is

furnished with accurate and relevant agricultural information. Nokia does so by partnering up

with numerous organizations with agricultural expertise, thereby creating an ever-growing

ecosystem of reliable agricultural content providers. These organizations include government

agencies, non-government organizations, and even private agri-businesses, thus ensuring

comprehensive sourcing and coverage of information. Furthermore, Nokia streamlines the

provision of content by having an agriculture editorial desk that provides technical and editorial

support to partners in aggregating, validating, translating, and publishing contents.

25 Potta, Bhanu. "mAgriculture in India - the Contribution of Mobile Telephony for Dissemination of Agriculture-

related Information to Farmers." Edited by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed March 24, 2016.



As such, NOKIA LIFE has great potential in being an exemplary model for the

development of smartphone applications and systems for the provision of agricultural

information to farmers in Pakistan. Given that NOKIA LIFE is only a feature phone application,

there is room for the expansion and improvement of its features, such as access to more robust

knowledge-based systems, the addition of map- and video-based services, the utilization of

smartphone cameras and sensors, as well as social media connectivity. It would also be greatly

beneficial to suggest the addition of local Pakistani organizations to Nokia’s ecosystem of

partners and to work with the partners in creating centralized databases and knowledge-based

systems for the provision of agricultural information, given their various expertise and in-depth

experience in the field.

IV. Gathering agricultural data for extension

Smartphone technology has great potential in enabling farmers to become significant

participants in gathering agricultural data necessary for the creation of content for extension. One

of the ways in which this potential can be demonstrated is through precision agriculture.

Precision agriculture refers to the embedding of information and communication technologies

(ICTs) such as sensors and automated equipment in farm processes in order to enable greater

monitoring and control. Although precision agriculture is employed mainly in farms in

developed countries at the moment, its viability for use in developing nations such as Pakistan is

ever increasing as sensors are becoming cheaper and more advanced in terms of versatility,

function, and capabilities.

Given the above, smartphones can allow farmers to use these sensors to gather data

useful to researchers, which include precisely localized meteorological information,

environmental conditions such as water and air quality, soil nutrients, moisture, and temperature,


and even attacks by pests and diseases. Automated equipment controllable via smartphones also

allows farmers to gather data from specific farming procedures such as cultivation, harvest, and

the application of irrigation, fertilizers, and pesticides. Additionally, smartphones can be used to

record information from radio frequency identification (RFID) systems as well as GPS tracking

to provide data about the movement of agricultural inputs, outputs, and services.

V. Sharing user-generated agricultural data and information

In addition to enabling the generation of agricultural information, the robustness of

smartphone technology gives farmers and other actors in the agricultural production and market

chains a vastly improved ability to participate directly in sharing information. Maru describes

that an example of a platform wherein the various actors involved in agriculture can share

information is a geographic information system (GIS), an information system that allows one to

store, manage, analyze, and visualize geographic information.26 Smartphone applications allow

not only researchers, but also input suppliers, farmers, processors, and wholesalers alike to

directly and continuously contribute information about aspects such as land ownership, soil

profiles, and crop profiles– information that researchers would otherwise have had to procure

themselves. This continuously up-to-date information can be mapped using a GIS, allowing

participants to better visualize information, such as where best to plant in a given season and the

routes of farm service providers, thus permitting greater efficiency and better quality of products.

Social media, such as forums, blogs, photo and video sharing services, and social

networking sites is itself another platform, albeit less formal, enabled by smartphone technology

for sharing user-generated information that is accessible and useful to fellow farmers, other

agricultural production and market actors, and research institutions. By enabling greater

26 Maru, Ajit. "The Emerging Contours of New Agricultural Development." Edited by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed



participation in information sharing, social media and smartphone technology allow researchers

and institutions to have access to more information and therefore create more accurate and

continuously up-to-date datasets, thereby improving the provision of agricultural information.

Analysis

The above potential uses of social media and smartphone technology are important given

that they address the following notable agricultural challenges facing not only Pakistan, but the

entire Asia-Pacific region:

Given that the vast majority of farmers in the region have small or marginal land holdings,

there is a need to improve agricultural productivity for competitiveness.

The availability of agricultural land per person in the Asia-Pacific region (0.3 hectares) is

almost 20% of that in the rest of the world (1.4 hectares).27 This limitation in agricultural land

poses a problem for farmers with regard to maintaining the profitability of their farming

operations, and therefore their survival. Social media and smartphone technology greatly

contribute to improving the competitiveness of marginal or smallholder farms by vastly

improving the provision of necessary agricultural knowledge and information. With timely

access to appropriate knowledge and information, farmers greatly increase productivity, improve

the quality of their produce, and reduce wastage in both inputs and outputs, thus translating to

greater efficiency and profitability.

27 "Status of ICT/ICM in the Asia-Pacific." Edited by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed March 25, 2016.



The number of cadres qualified to serve rural communities in agricultural extension services

is very small.28

Given the magnitude of work involved in agricultural extension and the geographic

challenges inherent in dealing with rural communities, there will always be a deficit in the

number of cadres that are involved in providing extension services in proportion to the people

who need them. Social media and smartphone technology address this issue by acting as means

through which these cadres perform their work, essentially allowing them to multiply their

efforts. The dissemination of agricultural knowledge and skills through videos is a perfect

example. Videos such as those produced by Digital Green obviate the need for the physical

presence of extension agents in demonstrating simpler techniques, freeing up these agents to

tackle more complex and pressing agricultural needs in other communities.

Since the 1990s, investment in agricultural extension systems in the region has been

declining, therefore leading to deterioration in performance.29

There is little question that the work of agricultural extension is costly and therefore

greatly suffers with declining investment. Fortunately, however, social media and smartphone

technology promote vast improvements in the provision of agricultural extension services at

proportionately low costs. Social media and smartphone technology allow for optimal cost

efficiency by empowering farmers to access, gather, and share agricultural knowledge and

information. With farmers being able to access for themselves the knowledge and information

that they need through social media and smartphones, less resources can be spent providing this

28 "Current Status of ICT/ICM in AR4D." Edited by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed March 25, 2016.


29 "Status of ICT/ICM in the Asia-Pacific." Edited by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed March 25, 2016.



content to them face-to-face. Moreover, that the farmers themselves are empowered to gather

and share agricultural content enable them to become informal, yet effective extension agents to

other farmers in and beyond their own communities, also decreasing the need for formal face-to-

face extension.

Way Forward

Remaining Needs

In order for social media and smartphone technology to be used more effectively in

agricultural extension in Pakistan, several challenges must be addressed. Firstly, it is important to

increase the coverage of mobile broadband networks in rural areas. The telecom coverage maps

provided by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority indicate that by far, the most common

means of providing internet access in Pakistan is currently through digital subscriber line (DSL),

which requires physical telephone lines.30 Without mobile broadband networks, it would be

impossible to take advantage of the robust capabilities of smartphones described above. Part of

this challenge is how to incentivize mobile network operators (MNOs) to build network

infrastructure in rural areas with low population density, given that they deem doing so as

commercially untenable. A solution, therefore, would be for agricultural organizations to work

with the MNOs as well as the Pakistani government to help pay for the costs of building

infrastructures as well as operations.

Another challenge is the aggregation, customization, and development of quality

agricultural content, as well as information services to provide to farmers. Needless to say,

without providing the appropriate content, social media and smartphone technology would not be

30 "Telecom Coverage Maps." Telecom Coverage Maps. Accessed April 10, 2016.

http://www.pta.gov.pk/digitalmaps/digitalmaps.php.


able to reach their full potential in agricultural extension. A solution for this involves working

with other agricultural content and service providers, especially those within Pakistan, to develop

a central knowledge and information base. This is similar in essence to the approach taken by

Nokia to support its NOKIA LIFE agricultural service application, which has proven to be

greatly beneficial.31 It would even be advantageous to partner directly with Nokia’s ecosystem of

partners in order to take advantage of their expertise and the capacities that they have already

developed.

Yet another challenge is increasing the penetration of smartphones among the rural

communities in Pakistan. This challenge is becoming easier to tackle as smartphones become

cheaper and increasingly more robust in capabilities. To accelerate the penetration of

smartphones, it would be helpful to work with the Pakistani government in providing subsidies

for smartphones, as well as with MNOs to promote their use. To address concerns about the

usability of smartphones, an approach similar to that employed in the AKMS in Bangladesh can

be employed. Educated youths can be trained on how to use smartphones and the agricultural

extension applications and services in them, and they can in turn teach others in their

communities, or directly communicate the information needed to a farmer who is not literate.

Future trends

In the future, smartphones will become more robust in capabilities and thus have further

potential in becoming all-in-one tools for use by extension service agents and farmers alike. As

hardware becomes cheaper, more sophisticated, and even more miniaturized, the embeddedness

of social media and smartphone technology in agricultural extension will become even more

31 Potta, Bhanu. "mAgriculture in India - the Contribution of Mobile Telephony for Dissemination of Agriculture-

related Information to Farmers." Edited by Gerard Sylvester. Accessed March 24, 2016.



practical, and will further empower rural communities to take agricultural development into their

own hands. As smartphones and social media proliferate, communities will be increasingly able

to teach themselves and one another, and even become valuable participants in the aggregation

of agricultural knowledge and information.

The evolution in technology will also result in cheaper and better sensors that

communicate with each other and with smartphones, thus enabling the crossing over of precision

farming from the developed world to the developing world. As such, smartphones will become

invaluable tools in marginal and smallholder farms not only for gathering and processing real-

time information from farming processes and environmental conditions, but also for controlling

automated equipment for manually labor-intensive processes such as irrigation.

Finally, the proliferation of “cloud” or on-demand computing capabilities will shift the

geography of computing activity for information processing, thus obviating the need for

traditional computing hardware in (desktop computers and servers) in the region. Smartphones

that are connected to central databases, information systems, and knowledge-based systems

utilizing cloud computing networks will enable rapid access to and dissemination of knowledge

and information, thus accelerating the pace of agricultural extension across the region.


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