Impacts of ICTs in Agriculture: Farmers and Mobile Phones in Morocco

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Impacts of ICTs in Agriculture Farmers and
Mobile Phones in Morocco

• Hsain Ilahiane
• Department of Anthropology, Iowa State
  University
  
• hsain_at_iastate.edu
• Presented at the American Anthropological
  Association Conference
  
• Washington, D.C.
• December 1, 2007

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Abstract

• Agricultural decisions on timely soil preparation
  and planting, irrigation and weeding, cultivating
  and harvesting, and storage and marketing have
  always been key concerns to farmers. The impacts
  of information and communication technologies in
  agriculture are not new, and many forms of
  indigenous knowledge are still central in
  managing agriculture. In the developing world,
  however, the mobile phone is a ubiquitous
  technology of urban-rural socio-economic speed,
  and it is considered a development tool to
  leapfrog legacy infrastructure and innovate
  more quickly than through older industrial forms.
  Mobile Phones are speeding up ways in which
  farmers get, exchange, and manipulate
  information. They rework the way farmers interact
  with markets and cities. Increasingly, they
  enable farmers to focus, search, and extract
  useful and up-to-date market information from
  social and business networks. Farmers are also
  able to make tentative decisions much more easily
  than before, and are less constrained by time and
  place in doing this, because they are always
  accessible and can give the order to sell now!
  or store for later!. In this paper, I examine
  the impacts of new ICTS in agriculture and
  outline some emerging trends. Second, based on
  ethnographic data from Morocco, I investigate how
  and to what effects telephony is used by farmers.
  Third, I claim that telephony has deepened market
  participation, resulting in intensive cultivation
  of cash crops. Fourth, I contend that telephony
  is a tool of organizing production and marketing
  of crops, leading to higher revenues. Finally, I
  situate my argument in the literature on
  agricultural anthropology and technological
  change.

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In Memory of Zouhair Yahyaoui, Tunisia's most
prominent cyber-dissident, 1969-2005

• Founder, editor, and webmaster of the satirical
  online newsletter TuneZine (www.tunezine.com)
  
• Opponent of Tunisias repression of free
  expression rights.
  
• Winner of the 2003 Prix Cyberliberté for his
  efforts to defend free expression on the
  internet.
  

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What are ICTs?

• is the combination of hardware, software, and
  the means of production that enable the exchange,
  processing, and management of information and
  knowledge. ICTs thus include technologies and
  methods for storing, managing, and processing
  information (e.g., computers, software, books,
  PDAs, digital and non-digital libraries) and for
  communicating information (e.g., mail and email,
  radio and television, telephones, cell phones,
  pagers, instant messaging, the web, etc.). In
  everyday speech, ICTs commonly refer to
  electronic and digital devices and the software
  used for storing, retrieving, and communicating
  information.
• Source http//www.dot-com-lliance.org/documents/A
  G_ICT_USAID.pdf
  

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Research Questions

• Does cellular phone use affect farmers
  revenues?
  
• Does cellular phone use affect agricultural
  production strategies?
  
• Does cellular phone use in farming result in
  agricultural intensification?
  

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ICTs theoretical departures

• In his work on the phone in the USA btw
  1990-1940, Fisher argues that the telephone did
  not radically alter American ways of life
  rather, Americans used it to more vigorously
  pursue their characteristic way of life.
  (19925).
• Ling (2004) on the cell phone personal security,
  ability to organize activities on the fly,
  micro-coordination as in mid-course adjustment,
  iterative coordination, and softening of
  schedulesFlexibility of the cell.

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More ICTs theory

• Miller and Slater (2000) argue that ICTs (the
  internet in Trinidad) allow for what they call
  expansive realization. Use of technology to
  overcome spatial and temporal limitations.
• Miller and Horst (2005) see technology as a
  hyphen in integrating individual and social
  networking--link up and leveraging social
  capital.
• Ilahiane and Sherry (2004) argue that mobile
  technology expands the productive opportunities
  for certain types of activities in urban
  Morocco.

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Theorizing Agricultural Change in Anthropology

• Boserup suggests agricultural change is related
  to population pressure and changes in the
  man/land ratio should be reflected by a
  transition in land use strategies.
• Boserups argument is based on the idea of
  diminishing returns to labor investment. Without
  the inducement of resource scarcity, people do
  not intensify due to the increase in work and the
  mediocre, and falling, returns on labor.
• Using a set of examples of traditional
  agricultural systems, she advances the
  relationship between population density and
  agricultural intensification. Accordingly, the
  intensification index is based on the cropping
  frequency of land use systems along a temporal
  spectrum, from forest fallow through bush and
  short fallow to annual and multicropping
  (196528-34).

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More theory

• Barlett (1977) states that movements in the
  direction of intensive and extensive land use
  systems toward large or small farms are mediated
  by access to land, capital needed for the
  purchase of inputs, and the development of
  markets.
• Moran (1981) contends that agricultural
  settlement schemes in the Amazon Basin and
  Southeast Asia are as often responses to state
  subsidies and volatile inflation rates as they
  are to higher population densities.

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More theory

• Because of a new colonial imposed security in the
  plains the Kofyar of West Africa migrated from
  their hilltop intensively cultivated plots to
  lower elevation frontier lands where they
  practiced swidden agriculture despite the fact
  that they had knowledge of intensive farming.
• In addition to the use of modern inputs, the
  old intensive techniques re-emerged on frontier
  lands once they were filled up and population
  increased (Netting 1968 and 1993).

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More theory

• While agreeing that land use change is somehow
  related to population pressure, Geertz (1963)
  contends that land use transformations are
  involutionary, and do not constitute transitions
  to a different system of farming.
• He demonstrates how the Dutch policies of
  economic exploitation in Java conspired to
  perpetuate the relationship between population
  pressure on scarce land and intensive land use
  based on higher labor inputs with declining
  marginal productivity. These external forces,
  played on the circumscribed and small-sized sawah
  fields production and led, he insists, to the
  emergence of a model of agricultural involution.
• Within this inconclusive debate, I shall argue
  that the use of mobile telephony has deepened
  market participation, resulting in agricultural
  intensification and higher revenues for farmers
  in southern Morocco.

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Why Morocco?

• Ranks 126th on the Human Development Index
• 1 in 5 Moroccans has a mobile phone
• What on earth are Moroccans doing with mobile
  phones?
  
• Are mobiles just another global fad or tools of
  productivity?
  
• Top 40 Berber music on the Portable invasion!!
  
  

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The context Globalization in Morocco

• 1980s economic crisis
• Washington consensus/shock therapy
• Privatization
• Telecom rapid liberalization- FDI
• Informal sector effects

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Mobile Users 1995-2002
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Methods and data

• Secondary data
• Ethnography
• Questionnaire
• SPSS

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A diverse agricultural system trees of value,
cash crops and livestock (dates, olives, apples,
peaches, almonds, cereals, melon, watermelon,,
vegetables, alfalfa, sheep, and cattle)
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Summary characteristics

• N 21
• Age 40.08 (range 21-58)
• Average farm size 73.66 ha
• Average Yrs of edu. 9.33 yrs.
• Marital Status
• Married 91.7
• Single 8.3
• Ethnicity
• Arab 33
• Berber 37
• Haratine 30

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Device ownership and use per respondent
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Average Pre- and post cellular phone use income
in Moroccan dirhams
Annual Income before use 178,875.00
Annual Income after 216,329.16
Percentage of Change 20.95
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Emerging Intensification trends

• 40 of respondents plan to cultivate time
  sensitive cash crops (mostly vegetables and
  dessert crops)
  
• 20 plans to reinforce the Alfalfa-livestock
  commercial complex.
  
• 35 plans to plant olives, dates, apples, nuts,
  and market friendly trees.
  
• Only about 5 is still keen on expanding land use
  for traditional staples as in wheat and barley
  (E.U. and U.S. dumping practices!)
  

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Intensification trends

• Percentage of change in labor recruitment 93.45
  (increase)
  
• 1 mobile phone 6 permanent jobs
• 1 mobile phone travels about 453.75 km

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Marketing Patterns of Produce from Errachidia
110 km
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Old vs. new technology a cell phone is not a
tractor!

• Not a limited goodthere is no single resource
  to be tapped, the network is the resource. The
  more participation, the greater the economic
  returns on the resource this is not the tragedy
  of the commons. The more use, the greater the
  intensification index.
• Network effects vs. diminishing competitive
  advantage (not a problem of scarcity)
  
• Whats important about mobile phones technology
  is a resource for human agency rather than an
  economic or social force in its own
  rightInterpretive flexibility allowing many
  kinds of information uses and socio-economic
  speed.
• Low Capital requirements enables individuals, as
  opposed to corporate ownership (differentiation/di
  stinction versus consolidation/ technology rents
  of the Green Revolution)
• Uses natural human ability voice interaction.
  Highlights a relationship between knowledge and
  capital in agricultural decision-making.
  

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Le Portable mobile phone is the sixth pillar
of Islam.

• It brings markets and market information to
  farmers
  
• Breaks down distance barriers.
• Fosters Zama (short term risk-taking and a
  carpe diem attitude towards produce and
  livestock marketing)
  
• Pushes for greater levels of farming
  intensification.
  

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Le Portable Matters!

• It asserts the agency of farmers in a broader
  understanding of land use changeZama and
  risk-taking attitudes.
  
• Identifies key characteristics of ICTs that make
  it a suitable resource for decentralized or
  bottom up exploitation of productive
  opportunities.
• Reframes our understanding about the impact of
  information and connectivity on the direction and
  type of land use change.
  

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Special thanks to

• Intel Corporation funding.
• Errachidias farmers.
• Office Regional de Mise en Valeur Agricole du
  Tafilalet.
  
• LInstitut National des Postes et
  Telecommunications.
  
• Secretariat dEtat aupres du Premier Ministere
  Charge de la poste et des technologies des
  telecommunications et de linformation-SEPTI
  
• Agence nationale de reglementation des
  telecommunications-ARNT