Connected-Farmers

Smartphone-enabled services
Towards integrated, smartphone-enabled solutions
The Vodafone Farmers’ Club in Turkey has generated an estimated $140 million in annual
efficiency savings for farmers through mobile information services and support. Members
benefit from a range of services integrated into a tailored package including smartphoneenabled
services and an online marketplace.
The Vodafone Farmers’ Club, a mobile price plan and services
package, was launched in 2009 by Vodafone in collaboration
with the Turkish Ministry of Food & Agriculture. It includes
mobile products, information services, education activities
and a loyalty club to help farmers save money and improve
efficiency and productivity. Farmers pay a small monthly fee
to subscribe.
The Farmers’ Club information service enables members,
including those in remote areas, to get information on the
latest agricultural practices, weather forecasts and prices
through an SMS alert service, with advice tailored to a farmer’s
local area and crop types.
Members can also purchase affordable and hard-wearing
handsets that have been specially designed to cope with life
on the farm, and Vodafone has worked in partnership with
Sekerbank, to offer an annual billing option. This means farmers
can postpone paying their mobile bill until harvest time, when
their income is highest.
To keep farmers engaged in the service and encourage new
members, there are regular competitions and lottery events,
with six club members a year winning a tractor for their farm.
A Vodafone Farmers’ Club truck tours farming communities
around Turkey to raise awareness of the offer and provide
training to help farmers get the best value from the service. This
has played an important role in raising awareness and engaging
rural communities.
A major challenge for farmers is lack of market access, leaving
them reliant on middlemen. This means they often get lower
prices for their produce and can lose out on sales altogether if
middlemen choose not to buy their harvest. The Farmers’ Club
helps tackle this by providing information and transparency
on market prices, and has developed an online SMS-based
marketplace for peer-to-peer sales, tarimsalpazarlama.com.
Farmers can advertise their produce, machinery, equipment and
goods directly to buyers via a simple text.
Vodafone Turkey has also launched the Vodafone Farming
Guide Android app through which smartphone users can
access all the Farmers’ Club information services and check
the latest news and offers whenever it suits them. Over time
this will generate farm-level data that can be used to further
tailor and improve information and other mobile services. It will
also enable improved functionality on the marketplace site,
allowing users to gain a better idea of the quality and type of
produce advertised.
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