Improving Agricultural Market Performance:
Developing Agricultural Market Information Systems
41
In fulfilment of its objective of enhancing capacity to respond to food crisis at national and
regional levels, RESIMAO collaborates with the Food Security Information Network (FSIN), is
which a global initiative co-sponsored by the FAO, WFP and IFPRI to produce and publish
information on the food supply situation in member countries as well as neighbouring countries
such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) (see Figure 10).
3.5 2GMIS MODELS RUN BY PROFESSIONAL ORGANISATIONS/NGOS The third category of MIS platforms usually aims to provide information to smallholder farmers,
enabling them to negotiate for better prices. The platforms are also intended to provide traders
with information on available supplies as well as prevailing prices in major rural markets,
thereby facilitating trade. The host organisations for these MIS may differ. For instance, the Rice
Observatory (OdR) was set up and run by a consultative group of actors in the rice value chain
in Madagascar. It was established in 2004 as part of efforts to manage instability in the price of
rice, a strategic cereal in the country. In addition to providing price information and trends in
the rice subsector, the OdR offered a platform for consultation among the different actors in the
rice value chain and provided evidence for policy advocacy by the players. It has been noted that
the consultative platform and the evidence generated through the OdR made it possible for the
government to respond more effective to soaring global food prices in 2007/08 (CTA, 2012).
3.5.1 2GMIS MODEL RUN BY FARMERS’ ORGANISATION Some 2GMIS are hosted and run by farmers’ organisations, though often supported by donor
funding. Chiatoh and Gyau (2016) cite examples of these including the Malian Agricultural
Markets Observatory (OMA) and Madagascar Vegetable Market Information Service (SIEL). In
general, these platforms collect price information from major rural and urban through
interviewing or phoning up traders. The data collected is processed by units in the head offices
of the farmers’ organisations and disseminated via television/radio broadcasts as well as
through the print media and traditional noticeboards mounted in rural markets. They also use
SMS messaging to disseminate market information (Staatz et al., 2014). The main sources of
funding range from subscription fees from mobile messaging and donor funding alongside
internal cross-subsidies from other income-generating activities undertaken by the farmers’
organisations (Chiatoh, and Gyau, 2016).Other examples include the MVIWATA Agricultural Market Information System (MAMIS) and
the ZNFU’s MIS. MVIWATA is a national farmers’ organisation in Tanzania whilst ZNFU is the
lead representative organisation of farmers in Zambia. The methodology applied in collecting
price information by both MIS relies on interviewing of traders by field officers of the farmers’
organisations. Dissemination is also mainly by mobile telephones and through publication
journals covering analytics on market developments as well as via television and radio
broadcasts. Among the factors which optimised benefits to farmers and other actors from these
two MIS platforms are the content of information provided; linkage of MIS to other marketing
and finance initiatives targeting farmers; and the dissemination strategy adopted.In Box 3 is a summary of how these outcomes were achieved partly because the two farmers’
organisations participated in the EU-funded Farm Risk Management (FARMAF) Project which
supported actions to improve existing MIS. In addition, FARMAF supported actions to improve
the overall performance of agricultural output markets by strengthening and/or scaling up
access to market institutions such as WRS, commodity exchanges as well as forward contracting