Zaca Mit $100k Executive Summary

OVERVIEW

zaca: Enpowering people through information; improving livelihoods via innovation For famers among the rural poor, the difference between a little food on the table or none at all can depend on the the mercies of weather, the whims of a middleman, and the uncertainties of the market. zaca is a mobile-based technology that seeks to improve rural livelihoods by providing a platform for resource-strapped farmers to 1) aggregate produce information and 2) query current and historical market price of produce. By making this information accessible via widely available SMS technology, data transparency is imposed on the market, curtailing the opportunities for farmers to be exploited. The project has been baptised 'zaca' in tribute to the locale of our first deployment, the state of Zacatecas, in northern Mexico.

MARKET OPPORTUNITY + POTENTIAL IMPACT

zaca: Addressing information asymmetries that harm farmers and their communities The word ‘poverty’ immediately brings to mind material deficits, but in our increasingly technological and datadriven era, poverty has also come to be characterized by informational deficits. Indeed in Zacatecas, as in so many farming communities, the lack of knowledge both agricultural and commercial has effectively entrapped generations of communities in permanent poverty. Lack of knowledge about neighboring farms means that farmers often grow too much of one crop and not enough of another. Lack of knowledge about market prices of produce means that farmers often give away their goods at unjustly low prices to middlemen who then sell them on the market for a large profit. Lack of knowledge about farming practices means innovations and tools on one farm are not disseminated to nearby farms. zaca aims to redress the information asymmetries which disadvantage farmers throughout the farming process from the moment they plant their first seeds to the moment they sell their harvest. Currently, 47% of Zacateca’s population is rural. Over the past 10 years, 54% of Zacateca’s population has emigrated to the US. Of that 54%, 74% emigrated from a rural region. 208 communities have been lost to emigration zaca hopes to innovate the practice of farming in Zacatecas by providing farmers with transparent price information and quantity data. The price information will allow farmers to sell their produce at fair and competitive prices. The quantity information will enable them to better allocate their planting amongst various crops and coordinate their efforts with farmers nearby. By using zaca, farmers in rural communities can  eliminate information asymmetries  capture a higher income  retain their communities

SOLUTION + TECHNOLOGY

 produce more efficiently  improve their welfare and that of their families  regain their dignity

zaca is available to anyone in possession of a mobile phone. Close to 2/3 of rural inhabitants own a mobile phone and nearly all inhabitants have indirect access to one (through a family member or neighbor). PROCEDURE: Obtaining Information from the market : 1. Agents (recruited through the ITESM network) visit local markets, government sites, and enter info on the backend of our database regarding the latest market and selling prices of various products. ex:

Frenejillo

Tomatoes

MXN $0.42/kg.

Obtaining Information from the farmer: 2. Agents (recruited through the ITESM network and the farming community) visits farmers and collect info on the products available for sale, the quantities produced using a cell phone client interface that we have designed. ex:

L. Costa

Tomatoes

249kg

MXN $81

via J. Manzilla

MXN $.33/kg.

3. Farmers can send an SMS to query the database for the information they need ex: pregunta “crop name”, With a minite, farmers get a sms message with the latest historical market price for a particular crop.

Our server is capable of interacting with any phones that have SMS-capability. The back-end is fully automated to work autonomously, while enabling agents to add, delete and modify contents through a user friendly interface. Requiring only a basic computer to act as the server, a readily-available GSM modem provides connectivity to clients through the cell phone network any place, any time, instantly. Farmers subscribing to the system will receive crop price information as per their needs: from up-to-the-minute when prices change to seasonal averages, each user can leverage the system in a way that makes sense. On-demand information, too, can be obtained by sending an SMS message to query for the latest available data or for supplementary information, such as alternative crops or local yield statistics.

PROGRESS + SUSTAINABILITY zaca benefits from and is grateful for the sponsorship and stewardship from ITESM one of Mexico’s most prestigious technical universities. The team has partnered specifically with ITESM Zacatecas since the beginning of the project in September 2008. Throughout the fall of 2008, a team of MIT students defined the project requirements, constructed the systems architecture along with a working demo. This progress was supplemented along with a site visit by the students to deploy the technology in January of 2009. The site visit included initial deployment of the technology, training sessions for the agents and visit to the remote areas to get farmers feedback on the technology. Part of the team is scheduled to travel again to the site in late March (farming season) to implement the technology in a bigger scale. Using an iterative design process, over the course of spring and summer of 2009, the team will make further efforts to refine and evaluate the technology over periodic trips to the site. From late summer and into fall, the team will analyze the findings and feedback to determine how to scale out zaca to other regions and into other sectors, such as fishing or timber. We plan to charge zaca’s users a small subscription fee to use the service. As well, we would charge large companies seeking to get produce directly from local farmers. These companies would pay a fee to access produce and quantity information and contact information for the farmer(s) they are looking to work with.

TEAM + SUPPORT The team has been gathered under the aegis of MIT’s NextLab, headed by serial entrepreneur and América Móvil executive Jhonatan Rotberg, Director of the Next Billion Network at MIT.

Members include: Scot Frank, MIT – Engineering; Joshua Haynes, Tufts – Fletcher School of Diplomacy; M. Ehsan Hoque, MIT – Media Lab; Chizoba Nnaemeka, MIT – Sloan School of Management; Koji Ojae, MIT – Sloan School of Management; Rakesh Sahu, MIT – Engineering; Eric White, Harvard – Kennedy School of Government