Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers

By Marcel Fafchamps, B. Minten. 2012

490 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study estimates the benefits that Indian farmers derive from market and weather information delivered to their mobile phones by a commercial service called Reuters Market Light (RML). We conduct a controlled randomized experiment in 100 villages of Maharashtra. Treated farmers associate RML information with a number of decisions they have made, and we find some evidence that treatment affected spatial arbitrage and crop grading. But the magnitude of these effects is small. We find no statistically significant average effect of treatment on the price received by farmers, crop value-added, crop losses resulting from rainstorms, or the likelihood of changing crop varieties and cultivation practices. Although disappointing, these results are in line with the market take-up rate of the RML service in the study districts, which shows small numbers of clients in aggregate and a relative stagnation in take-up over the study period. Copyright 2012, Oxford University Press.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Media Technology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ade04a7adf6259a2ae2e5587c5800ce445a98148

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

In General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

In Media Technology

Citations in the corpus

Realizing the potential of digital development: The case of agricultural advice (2019, background): “In contrast, sending farmers price and weather information through text messages and phone calls did not affect average prices for crops from farmers in India or Colombia ( 61 – 63 ).”
Using agriculture for development: Supply- and demand-side approaches (2020, unknown): “However, better price information may have no effect on prices received by farmers if they have no option to sell on these markets and no bargaining power with local merchants (Fafchamps and Minten, 2012).”
Supply‐Chain Research Opportunities with the Poor as Suppliers or Distributors in Developing Countries (2014, background): “…et al. (2009) report that the farmers they interviewed reported “positive beneﬁts” by way of higher income because of their RML subscriptions, Fafchemps and Minten (2012) did not ﬁnd any signiﬁ-cant differences in price received by RML subscribed farmers and regular farmers (i.e., the…”
Will digital technologies transform agriculture in developing countries (2016, unknown): “Fafchamps and Minten (2012) look at the effect of SMS-based agricultural information on producer prices in India and find that access to information did not significantly increase the prices they received, whereas Muto and Yamano (2009) found that in Uganda mobile phone coverage had a positive…”
Market inefficiencies and the adoption of agricultural technologies in developing countries 1 (2013, background): “Fafchamps and Minten (2012) test the effect of SMS- based information on agricultural decisions in India and find no significant effect of price and weather information delivered using ICTs.”
Airtime transfers and mobile communications: Evidence in the aftermath of natural disasters (2016, background): “…how mobile phones can, under certain conditions, reduce information asymmetries and search costs in agricultural markets (Jensen 2007, Aker 2008, Fafchamps & Minten 2012, Aker & Fafchamps 2014), lower transaction costs (Jack & Suri 2014), and potentially provide an alternative device for…”
Mobile Phones and Farmers’ Marketing Decisions in Ethiopia (2015, background): “According to Jensen (2007) mobile phone coverage improved market functioning in Kerala, India.”
The Little We Know: An Exploratory Literature Review on the Utility of Mobile Phone‐Enabled Services for Smallholder Farmers (2018, background): “…of the studies of marketing-related m-services have sought to explain limited impacts by referring to other constraints that prevent farmers from taking advantage of price information or marketing choices (Fafchamps and Minten, 2012; IMaCS, 2011; Islam and Grönlund, 2010; Lokanathan et al., 2011).”
Farmer Bargaining Power and Market Information Services (2015, methodology): “To our knowledge, the rst evaluation of a mobile-based MIS has been conducted recently by Fafchamps and Minten (2012). Running a randomized controlled trial to test whether Indian farmers who are MIS users obtain higher prices for their agricultural output, they nd a zero impact.”
Mobile Phone Coverage and Producer Markets: Evidence from West Africa (2014, unknown): “27 These findings are similar to Fafchamps and Minten (2012), who show that a mobile phone-based price information intervention in India is not associated with a higher producer price levels.”
Do farmers gain internet dividends from E-commerce adoption? Evidence from China (2021, background): “Yet, others found that information communication technology has no significant impact on farmers (e.g. Monloy, 2008; Futch & McIntosh, 2009; Fafchamps and Minten, 2012).”