Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers

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 inf...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors:	Fafchamps, Marcel, Minten, Bart
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	en_US
Published:	Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2014
Subjects:	access to market agricultural price agricultural prices auction average price market information market price market prices market research marketing price inflation price level price uncertainty price variation producer prices sale sales surplus wholesale price wholesale prices
Online Access:	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19077

id	okr-10986-19077
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-190772021-04-23T14:03:51Z Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers Fafchamps, Marcel Minten, Bart access to market agricultural price agricultural prices auction average price market information market price market prices market research marketing price inflation price level price uncertainty price variation producer prices sale sales surplus wholesale price wholesale prices 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. 2014-07-30T15:21:25Z 2014-07-30T15:21:25Z 2012-11 Journal Article World Bank Economic Review 1564-698X 10.1093/wber/lhr056 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19077 en_US CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo World Bank Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank Publications & Research :: Journal Article India
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	en_US
topic	access to market agricultural price agricultural prices auction average price market information market price market prices market research marketing price inflation price level price uncertainty price variation producer prices sale sales surplus wholesale price wholesale prices
spellingShingle	access to market agricultural price agricultural prices auction average price market information market price market prices market research marketing price inflation price level price uncertainty price variation producer prices sale sales surplus wholesale price wholesale prices Fafchamps, Marcel Minten, Bart Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers
geographic_facet	India
description	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.
format	Journal Article
author	Fafchamps, Marcel Minten, Bart
author_facet	Fafchamps, Marcel Minten, Bart
author_sort	Fafchamps, Marcel
title	Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers
title_short	Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers
title_full	Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers
title_fullStr	Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers
title_full_unstemmed	Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers
title_sort	impact of sms-based agricultural information on indian farmers
publisher	Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
publishDate	2014
url	http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19077
_version_	1764443520468254720

Impact of SMS-Based Agricultural Information on Indian Farmers

Similar Items