Beyond Profit is blogging from Villgro’s Unconvention in Chennai, India.
We’re always told to think out of the box when trying to come up with a new idea, but often, when working in rural settings, it makes sense to think inside the box, working within the current constraints of low funding and low tech.
The reason? Sometimes a simple solution can be the most ingenious, practical, and applicable one. Take for example the company Shree Kamdhenu. They have created centralized authomatic milk collection kiosks that use simple but appropriate technology to weigh the milk, insure hygiene, increase efficiency, and create transparency. Before, farmers had to depend on manual systems which were unhygienic, laborious and prone to human error. These automated systems allow farmers to get more money for their product because they are precise, and measure every last drop. To date, 2,000 systems have been installed in rural areas (Gujurat, Maharastra, UP and Nepal).
Even simpler: the Mushroom Development Foundation. The MDF brings mushroom farmers together into clusters so that they have more control over pricing their product: shrooms of all kinds. On the other side of the equation, MDF also joins the vendors together, creating a parallel platform that allows the farmers and vendors to engage on fair footing. There’s no technology here. Just the power of collective strength and organization.
Another example, index pricing for farmers. Think about this: what if your only option for buying a place ticket were to buy a ticket on your day of travel for whatever price was available? It would be insanely restricting not to mention nerve-racking. This is what farmers deal with everyday when they take their, say, bushel of cilantro, to market. R. Ramaseshan has created an index, NCDEX-Future Pricing, which allows the demand and supply for agricultural products to be shown in a marketplace which indicates to the farmer what price he can get for his produce today and what he can get 6 months from now. The technology gives the farmer the ability to choose when he wants to sell and at what price—very empowering and helpful in terms of making decisions about what to plant and when to sell.
Two of these tools are about precision and knowledge creation. Two are about the power that comes from creating groups–in one case, groups of people, in another case, groups of commodities. All of them are enabling farmers to access the power of the market in a more efficient way. None of them involves complicated technology. Think about it…think about thinking in the box.
