Lessons from Addressing Challenges in an Agricultural Extension Scheme Using Mobile Apps

Organizations that give out loans to farmers are interested in seeing the farmers farms do well, so farmers can reap a bountiful harvest and repay their loans. In the case under consideration, the organization employs agriculture extension officers who should visit farmers at seven times at key stages during a farming cycle. The city based administrators of the scheme have no way of ensuring that extension officers actually visit the farmers at the appointed times and time intervals. Further, the farmers claims of poor harvests cannot be verified, leading to loan defaults. This project makes use of a multi-language mobile and web application to address these and other challenges faced by the industry in an innovative way. The mobile application can work offline and synchronizes with a cloud database when connectivity is available. The application has been deployed for more than one year. The design of the application, results and lessons from the deployment are presented.