Actions and advice in coli: a mobile social network to support agricultural peer learning

To improve their agricultural output, farmers require timely and contextualized information and advice. Relevant information and advice provided by trusted peers represents a promising approach. We present the considerations for the design of coli, an agricultural information network on touch screen equipped smart phones and results from its 10-month trial with 15 farmers in a village in India. Although some farmers avoided dispensing prescriptive advice in person due to fear of liability, they had no reservations about sharing their farming activities via a mobile phone application. Richer farmers were more inclined to trust the information entered by other farmers than the marginal farmers, who found it useful but preferred first-hand verification of outcomes. Only proactive farmers, however, were motivated enough to enter data.