Carrying data to the field

Extension workers in Kenya travel with the Farmer Info Station to bring agricultural information to rural farmers.

Infonet-Biovision is an online database and CD-ROM designed by scientists and local experts to provide practical information for farmers in developing countries. One of the partner organizations, the Swiss company Avallain, was also interested in using small, low-cost laptop computers to deliver the same information to people without internet access.

The company usually builds e-learning websites and information systems for educational publishers, and had already experimented with using the XO computer developed by the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) organization. They installed educational websites and databases on to 11 OLPC machines for use in a school in Nairobi. The children could access all the material directly from the hard drive of the computer without having to connect to the internet. The team saw that they could set up a similar method to deliver information to rural farmers.

Avallain researched a range of available computers, but decided that the XO laptop suited their needs perfectly. ‘It is a very rugged little computer,’ says Ignatz Heinz, Avallain’s managing director. ‘You can drop it, leave it outside in the dust, and even the rain, and it will still function. We also wanted to use a computer which could be disposed of relatively safely and, since the OLPC manufacturers try to use non-toxic materials as far as possible, this computer would cause the least damage if it ended up on a dump some day. ‘

Another feature of the XO is that the screen was specifically developed to be readable in strong sunlight; useful for farmers and extension workers who are often outdoors. But its low power consumption is probably the biggest advantage. The team managed to find a small, affordable, solar-charged battery kit that is capable of powering the computer for two days.

‘The XO only needs a relatively small solar panel,’ says Heinz, ‘and this battery pack can be carried in a small metal case, and is also very rugged. It’s about the same size as the laptop and has a 15 watt panel which works even on cloudy days, so there is never any need to connect to mains electricity to charge the computer.’

But while the hardware of the XO was suitable, Avallain found it difficult to work with an operating system that was originally developed for the OLPC project. ‘It was a new operating system,’ explains Heinz, ‘and we were not familiar with it. But we have now installed a Linux operating system called Ubuntu, which is well-known, so it was easier for us to develop software for that.’

Covering costs

The company now works with three organizations in Kenya to test the system, which they call the Farmer Info Station. Avallain also set up a company in Nairobi to provide local support to the 14 agricultural extension workers who now use the info stations. The equipment is small enough to be carried on a public bus or even on the back of a bicycle. And it comes with a USB stick to connect to the internet via the mobile phone network.

‘Kenya has relatively good coverage from the mobile phone networks,’ says Heinz, ‘so connectivity was not a major problem, but the cost was. A connection allowing one gigabyte of downloaded data per month costs the equivalent of half a teacher’s salary, which is too much for the project to continue paying in the long term. However, there was a package costing 250 Kenyan shilling (US$ 2.50) per month, with a download limit of 40 megabytes. This amount of bandwidth would be enough for our purposes, as long as we carefully manage the amount of data being downloaded. But with Infonet already installed on the computer, an internet connection is rarely necessary, and any updates to the database over the internet are covered in that monthly fee.’

In total, the whole system costs around US$ 380. This includes the XO computer, the solar panel recharge system, the USB stick from the mobile phone network provider to connect to the internet, and a 4 GB memory card, which carries the Ubuntu operating system. Having the operating system on a separate memory card makes it easier to repair and update the system and also, if the computer crashes for any reason, only that card needs to be replaced, rather than the chip inside.

One of the main partners testing the info station is The Organic Farmer (TOF) magazine. As well as providing information, TOF’s extension workers also supply organic fertilizer and pesticide products to organic farmers. The profits from the sale of agricultural inputs could provide one way of providing an increased income which could pay for more info stations in the long term. The agrovet shops that also provide these products could have the system installed on their premises, where farmers could pay to browse the databases or connect to the internet. But interest is already so high that Avallain expects to have more than 40 info stations operating in Kenya by the middle of 2010.

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Ignatz Heinz is managing director at Avallain (www.avallain.com)