During the month of October, I had the fortunate opportunity to work with a rural agricultural agent, located in the rural village of Kalanje in Zambia’s Eastern province. The agent was trained to be a sales person and advisor on chemical products for an agro-chemical supplier. During my time with the agent, it became apparent that there was a knowledge gap when attempting to assist farmers. The agent was having trouble retaining and understanding the complex knowledge that was disseminated to him.
To bridge that gap, I decided to test the assumption that by having the information in a chart on paper, he would be better able to refer to all the information, instead of attempting to recall everything that was taught in a workshop. Before I left, mid-October, I provided him with charts that linked crop problems, such as disease and pests that were prevalent in the area, to the proper crop-related agro-chemical product.
At the end of November, I made a trip back to Kalanje to record and capture his sales. My main objective was to see if the product charts had any impact on the sales of crop-related products. With better customer service for crop-related products, I expected to see an increase in sales of these to compliment his livestock sales, which he has been trading for months prior.
RESULTS… SO FAR
If the product charts proved successful in allowing the agent to solve these problems, there should be some indication in the sales records. If you refer to the graph below, it is evident that there was no significant increase.
View the raw data – many records were not dated and lumped together on the far right of the graph.
Some hypothetical conclusions for this:
- Vegetable crops that were almost ready to harvest in October were already harvested before the agent was given the charts. Therefore no products were needed in the time frame.
- The agent’s core competency is in supporting livestock and he puts all his sales effort into that business.
- During November fields are being prepared for planting maize. Only herbicides are needed whereas pesticides and fungicides are not. (There was no chart given on proper safe use of herbicides)
- Product charts are, simply, not useful for agents to use in the sales and advising process
- The idea is simply not effective in a rural Zambia context
- The agent may not actually know how to use the charts, despite my test results that indicated that agents with grade 12 education can quickly understand how to use them in less than a few minutes
- Farmers are more focused on protecting their livestock from the increased probability of disease brought on by increasing rains beginning in November
With so many environment-related factors affecting the test, we are not able to conclude on the effectiveness of (or lack thereof) the intervention at this point. Future trials will be needed to shed more light on the initiative.
The costs for this initiative (approximated):
- 2 days to create the charts
- 1 day to determine to how long how long it takes for an agent to understand the chart
- ~$50 round-trip travel to the agent from Lusaka
Correction:
I initially published this article saying the information was from Chinjala. The data is actually from Kalanje.
7 comments
Tags: 
Anthony, great post.
A few thoughts-
1. I wonder if the product chart could be simplified even further, to make it more accessible and less intimidating for agents.
2. Do you think if the initiative was piloted over a longer and appropriate period of time (i.e. when chemicals are in high demand), and with a larger number of agents, we would see benefit? Or even pilot it with high capacity agents who deal more with chemicals?
3. Can companies make the information more easily digestible for agents, so it would be easier to retain?
4. I’m wondering if you had any input from agents or staff from the company while designing the template (i.e. to get their perspective on what was the crucial information, and how best to present it).
5. What was the reaction of agents when they saw the chart? Or farmers? Or staff at the company?
I think overall, as you stated, it is difficult to determine if this has had any impact, but I don’t think it’s enough to discount the idea.
A representative from another chemical company saw the chart and mentioned his own company would benefit from producing such materials for their agents. So I think the idea has a lot of merit.
Just needs a bit of fine-tuning
Great questions Jo! Thanks,
1&3 – Simplifying the information
The large challenge of using agrochemical products is the incredibly complicated set of conditions involved. I actually feel that the charts as they stand now (linking crop, problem and product) is the minimal amount of information we can, responsibly, provide.
The only other way I feel we can simplify the charts is to start removing the crops and products that they cover. Even though this will reduce the maximum number of farmers the charts can support, it may allow agents to better serve the farmers that it does.
Currently, the way that companies or staff have learned agrochemicals is through exposure over time or learning by focusing on small portions of it. The top branch manager in the agrochemical company has had years of experience on a commercial farm working with agrochemicals. He is also the most successful in bringing new staff up to speed on their products. He does this by making each new staff member responsible for a single shelf or isle in his shop until they are the experts on those products.
2 – Seeing benefit
I do think that if we piloted the tool over a longer period of timeline we would see a benefit for people overall. The challenge with agriculture is that we deal with a 1-year cycle time (at least in Zambia with one rainy season) to truly see the effect.
However, with the highest capacity agents who are dealing more with chemicals, we may not see much benefit. All the high capacity people in agro-chemicals I’ve worked with are high capacity because they actually are able to identify all the problems that farmers face and can quickly advise a product to solve it from memory. It’s my hope that the chart tools can help medium and low capacity agents to provide advice with the same confidence as high capacity agents without investing in large amounts of training or waiting for them to accumulate years of experience.
4 – Input on the chart’s development
I did have input from agents and staff of the agro-chem company before and during the tool’s development. However, I’ll admit, direct input from agents was limited during the actual creation stage. This was because I was developing the charts on my computer and needed to be close to experts and the actual products I was compiling information from. So I was working mostly in the capital city, Lusaka, since rural agents don’t have much access to electricity and couldn’t really support me in their creation.
Agents, during my initial time in the field, didn’t seem to confident with their ability to advise farmers on chemical use. Also, after their initial training on chemical products, their ability to retain the information was questionable. But, Jo you were at this training, tell me if you thought otherwise
For staff of the chemical company, it was actually their concerns that prompted me to begin work towards these tools. During a budget meeting with all the branch managers and senior management, it was seen as a major challenge to bring new staff up to speed on their products. To help facilitate this process I suggested having a tool to make this information more centralized and visual. Company staff were helping me during the development of the tools. They corrected the information I was grabbing from product labels and suggesting ways to categorize the charts.
However, they were saying that I was missing key information on how to identify diseases and pests as well as missing information on dosage and each product’s withhold time. All of which could drastically affect farmer decision making on what product to use. Leaving those points out can also put farmers in danger if they do not, later follow the safety information printed on each product. I am, currently, unable to put in those pieces of information into the charts in a manner that was simple to read but also simple for the company to update the charts in the future. It’s my hope that agent training and literacy will be continue a safeguard to these problems.
5 – Reactions
Reactions to the tools were mostly positive. The main criticisms were that some were incomplete. There were missing products and crops that company agronomists identified and key information (withhold times and dosages) were missing as well. Others believed that a tool to diagnose crop problems and identify both diseases and pests is as important as the charts we developed and agents wouldn’t see much benefit unless both tools were in their hands.
Agents (about 5 of them) who were introduced to the tool all had positive reviews. They understood it gave all the complicated agrochemical information they needed to advise farmers and that it was something they can carry with them. Some agents, however, who were less educated did have difficulty in understanding how to use the tool without assistance.
Farmers, who agents and I visited all wanted copies of the tool once they saw them. They saw how agents were using them identify what product they should use once told of the pest or disease they were facing.
Reactions of staff of the agro-chem company were mostly positive. The CEO of the company envisions making large posters of each of the charts to put up in all of her branches. Copies of the charts have already been sent across Zambia to each branch manager. All of these initiatives were initially pursued without my knowledge (which I’m pretty glad about).
Conclusions
I do think that these can and will add value to the entire agro-chem sector. The fundamental challenge is the complicated nature of the knowledge surrounding agrochemicals. Most experts have many years of experience or many years of training from commercial farmers, colleges and universities. Whereas many small-scale farmers may not have education above grade 9 and even others are illiterate and have difficulty accessing the same knowledge. Community based agents, with training and these tools in hand, have the potential to close the gap between the experts educated in agrochemicals and small scale rural farmers who can use that knowledge to increase their productivity and food security.
Great, thanks!
Re: the format… I was thinking more in terms of presenting the information in another format, not taking out information. Ex. using a manual with pictures (i.e. if you see this happening with maize, use this). Especially if this is geared towards low- to medium- capacity agents.
Which brings me to my next point- do you think the same thinking applies to agents (as shop-based agents), where we want implementing NGOs to focus on the highest capacity agents (who could then naturally expand, build a shop, hire workers, etc)? Should we invest in lower capacity agents?
Re: that training in September… even the NGO involved was saying the information was too technical, the agents wouldn’t retain it or even needed it. (Especially since some could barely read). They’re supposed to have follow-up training in the next few months, which I’ll try to attend (for another input company), so it’ll be interesting to see that training, to see how many were ‘successful’ and how input suppliers view agents (in terms of worth investing in, or seen as valuable)
Mhmmm, right there were other ideas for presenting the idea.
Presentation
I really wanted to use pictures in a manual to help farmers identify problems. That was also brought up by branch managers. However, the ability for those manuals to be printed and distributed across the country would be limited by access to good printers. Unfortunately, photographs don’t photocopy well. The charts were printed black and white with the ability to be easily photocopied to make distribution slightly easier.
But we also toyed with the idea to use instructional videos on DVDs. From my field visits it seemed that every village had someone with a DVD player, TV and solar power. To push the idea further, we thought it would be neat to have the videos tailored to include an introduction and conclusion from each agent to increase the incentive to show farmers the information held within it.
Agent Focus
Even though I think the charts will have a larger impact on lower capacity agents, high capacity agents will be able to learn from these and up their overall capacity to advise farmers on agro-chemical products.
I think the goal with using agents is to maximize the amount of knowledge available to farmers and would still maintain the NGO focus on high capacity agents.
Training
Now that you mentioned it, that group has not received a follow up meeting since August and I wouldn’t be surprised if they have near-zero retention of the chemical knowledge they learned.
It’s funny because the input supply company I worked with have some very high capacity branch managers that have been successful at increasing their business by investing in these agents, but overall company-wide adoption has been poor.
—
It’s a really interesting scheme that NGOs have been investing in, and I think most input supply companies believe agents can contribute greately to their business. But I have two thoughts on the hesitation we see in using agents. Firstly, it could be due to the large investment of resources to see benefits much later and, secondly, that input supply companies simply may not be capable of adopting such a wide spread rural network of agents.
That training you’re going to attend seems really interesting, would love to hear about it once it’s done.
I love the emphasis on connecting a tool like this directly to some measurable indicator (even if it’s imperfect)!
Three ideas:
1) I agree that this needs more iteration and testing before any conclusions can be drawn about it’s usefulness. I wonder if there are some areas where you can get information outside of the normal crop cycle of once per year? (i.e. maybe agents who are serving farmers who irrigate/grow vegetables outside of the rainy season)
2) What about putting information on the chart that directly relates to the agents’ motivation — that is, profit? I’m not certain what this would look like, but maybe something like having the profit/bag of chemical at the top of the chart? (yes, lots of negative implications … but I’m trying to understand agent incentive and connect this tool with that)
3) I’ll echo the discussion already underway about simplifying the information. I wonder if this needs to be a complete source of information, or instead it just needs to have the most relevant information (or at least the most relevant is presented much larger)? A few examples:
a) If maize is a huge crop, maybe that should go at the top and be much larger in text, etc?
b) Maybe you could group the pests together in classes (not sure this is a good idea!)
c) Maybe you could organize the chart by pest type rather than crop type. I’m imagining and agent in the field. A farmer says to him “take a look at this pest on my maize, it’s eating the whole thing”. The agent and farmer are both thinking pest first, maize second. Maybe the chart should reflect that?
Also, I’ll refrain from the stupid idea I’m thinking which involves smartphone and mobile apps!!
Thanks for the ideas George,
I think checking these charts out with commercial farmers who irrigate their lands and hire staff to work on their farms would be a good start to see how these charts stack up. Or even asking agriculture institutions who probably have some form of controlled environment to teach students outside of the typical growing seasons. Of course, the big limiting factor is having people and time to do this.
Motivations
For linking the charts with motivations, I also am at a loss of what that could look like (Anyone out there have ideas?). The other challenge is that the variety of motivations that drive agents is wide. Everything from gaining an income to send their children to school, to social status, to free pop and muffins are motivations found within the group of agents I’ve worked with. I think it would be interesting to capture what motivates agents who are highly successful and find out if that idea is linkable in the chart form.
Chart simplification
I think it would be a great idea to reduce the charts to just what’s needed. Even make one chart that’s focused on maize and have other charts left over for peanuts/groundnuts, vegetables etc. All workable, I think we just need to prototype and test.
I organized the charts by crop -> pest -> solution based on a few observations. Both in downtown agro-shops in Lusaka as well as visits to farms in rural villages most farmers sought advice by first identifying the crop, then asking what the problem was… or if they knew the problem asking for a solution. With that in mind I made the first pilot in that format. However, this may not make sense for an agent going into a field to mimic how farmers (in my small sample) presented their situation. I’d say we should alter the charts in as many possible ways as possible and test them in the field.
But all in all, I believe a few different variations and iterations of the charts could prove useful. We just need a partner organization to really take these ideas and run with them.
P.S. Mobile apps might be useful! I downloaded an app on my iPod before I went into the field to help me estimate the amount of product I would need for pest control on different farms I visited. I think the app was from Dupont. It might be economically viable to put a tool like that in the hands of agents. If its easy to use, I think (from my observations) the novelty of a tool like that would give enough incentive for an agent to bring it into the field and use it.
[...] being developed by Anthony Candelario (EWB Africa Programs Staff) to try and address these issues: product charts that agents can use instead of memorizing extensive product lists, and a coupon system to promote [...]