Collection

Part of

Cocoa industry in Ghana

Farmerline

‘’Farmerline is a Ghanaian social enterprise specializing in the development of web platforms and mobile applications in order to disseminate and collect agricultural data to/from smallholder farmers. Since its launch in 2013, the innovative initiative that uses mobile technology for sustainable development has successfully reached over 200,000 small-scale farmers across five (5) countries. This includes surrounding countries of Ghana, Sierre Leone, Cameroon, Malawi and Niger. The amount is reached by making deals with food sourcing companies e.g. one food sourcing company is good for 80.000 small-scale farmers. Those companies can enter the Farmerline database to help their farmers with additional information provided by Farmerline. Names of food sourcing companies that are clients of Farmerline will not be listed in this report due to the competiveness of the market. Farmerline’s technology does not only bridge the barrier of illiteracy, but it also reduces the cost of communication and data collection for small-scale farmers as well as the organizations working with them.’’ [Farmerline, 2014]

Farmerline partnered with the TAHMO Initiative, Kwame Nkrumah University of Sciences and Technology (KNUST) and Delft University of Technology, on a water and weather Monitoring initiative that aims to help cocoa farmers with the establishment of 40 new weather stations in Ghana by 2016.

Farmerline will be actively supporting TAHMO through offering its innovative voice technology to communicate obtained weather forecasting results to more than 10,000 cocoa farmers. The 10.000 cocoa farmers are direct clients of Farmerline. At the moment they use the service for free, because companies offer farmers in Ghana most of the time free materials. Farmerline believes in their product and think that farmers at the end of the free period are willing to pay for their service. Also Farmerline will actively support TAHMO by developing educational materials for youth on climate change and effective water resource management In fact, each weather station will be hosted by a local secondary school in hopes of providing a hands-on approach for the students’ education and thus awareness of climate change.

The agricultural sector covers roughly 60% of Ghana’s workforce. The TAHMO Initiative hopes to achieve positive impact through effective monitoring, collecting and storing of ongoing and historical climate data. This to improve food production and harvest predictions. The initiative will begin with a particular focus on cocoa farms, but will eventually expand to other crops and other African countries such as Sierra Leone, Guinea and Senegal.

Farmerline is a proud partner of this initiative and looks forward to utilizing its mobile services to aid in the development of TAHMO’s efforts. This collaborative effort aims to bring a brighter future for Ghana’s agricultural sector and improved education for future generations on the importance of climate change.’’ [Farmline, 2014]