Udder genius: Fellows Friday with Su Kahumbu
Agriculturalist and social entrepreneur Su Kahumbu created iCow, a mobile app that supports farmers caring for livestock. Soon it will become an information-delivery platform that could help generate a whole new crop of young farmers.
What does iCow do?
The iCow application essentially reminds small-scale dairy farmers in Kenya of important periods in gestation. This was information farmers previously had to acquire by contacting veterinary offices or artificial insemination providers. Now, via SMS, farmers register, inputting information about their livestock, and iCow pushes information and instructions to them, prompting them on what to do during vital gestation days. It also offers tips and information on feeding practices, disease control, and so on. Much of this information is delivered over SMS, but farmers may also speak to a live person in our customer care centre. Our farmers will never trust something that is absolutely virtual — they like to know there’s a voice at the other end of the phone if they need it!
But iCow has already grown from when we launched it in June 2011 with two features — the gestation calendar and a search directory to help farmers find nearby vets and artificial inseminators. Literally — within two days — farmers started asking for more features. So we started building them, such as the iCow marketplace.
How does the marketplace work?
Many farmers in the dairy sector often upgrade or sell their animals. There’s as much interest in selling your in-calf heifers as there is in selling milk to processors. But while the processors have done a fairly good job of networking on developing milk-aggregating posts, not as much has been done where farmers can actually find other farmers who are selling animals. iCow allows farmers to post notices of animals for sale on the platform, and then farmers across the country can find them. If you’re looking for a specific breed within a particular distance, you can find out easily whether there’s one for sale.
Also, some products don’t have a very well-developed value chain — say, goat’s milk. iCow enables farmers who have only have few goats and therefore small amounts of milk to find each other and aggregate their product so that it can be taken to market. Farmers can post produce for direct sale on the platform as well, of course.
But the platform goes beyond serving farmers’ needs.
iCow is the last mile to the farmer. And that is very, very powerful. For many organizations, government ministries, and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector, the only way to get out to the farm is either by vehicle or working in small projects with us around the country. iCow essentially networks farmers that would otherwise be very difficult to access. Right now, iCow has 80 percent geographical penetration across the country. This enables all of the other stakeholders access to those farmers. iCow is already becoming a tool that’s not only used by farmers, but also by government and other agricultural industry stakeholders.
For example, the platform allows farmers to alert the system immediately when there are disease outbreaks, allowing everyone react to it very quickly. The local authorities can then broadcast this news to all farmers on the platform in the affected region, telling them where and when to find vaccination services. Other stakeholders are using it to advertise agricultural field days or exhibitions in certain locations, or to offer financial services, for example.
To read the complete interview, visit the TED Blog.
