There is a dire need to bridge the information asymmetry in the agricultural markets of Punjab which results in exploitation of the farmers/growers due to extortionist dealings of the commission agents and middlemen (also known as Artsy). Most often, it’s the middleman who gets the largest margins in profit (and of course, at time loss also), based on the high risk s/he takes. The farmers, on the other hand, who put in their sweat and toil for months, and are in dire need of urgent cash for the next crops, get a meager amount based on the prevalent low Spot Rate. Due to lack of Information, farmers are unable to take a decision to with-hold/store the crop for a few days more, failing to realize that past data trends indicate increase in price. Let alone future forecasting, farmers are often unaware of the present market rates (Spot Rates) in nearby markets, resulting in their selling the crops at the closest market rather than going an extra five miles where rates could have been considerably higher. Further, there is no exchange platform for farmers where the buyers could meet the sellers (as in a Commodity Exchange).

To overcome these hurdles faced by the farmers, this project aims at providing the market information and analytics to them in a very user friendly manner. Not only would they be given the Whole Sale prices (from Mandis or Market Committees) but also the Retail Prices from sampled Bazaars/Markets). The latter would actually help the house-hold consumers as well, who need to know the prevalent prices of vegetables, fruits, etc. in the bazaar/market.
To achieve the above mentioned goals of helping the farmers as well as house-hold consumers, the project will have the following components. For first three components (which involve farmers/consumers), the system will have front ends for following four user interfaces: Desktop, Mobile Apps, SMS and Call Center.

This will be used for providing daily spot rates of various commodities at different Bazaars (Markets) directly to any house hold consumer.

This will provide an opportunity for farmers to enter information about any produce which they are selling, so as to match them with any interested buyers.

This will be used for providing daily spot rates of 99 commodities at the Market Committees to the farmers. This will also provide weather forecasts to the farmers.

This will entail integrating the Radar System of the Met Dept. with their Data Analytics software.

The entire AMIS System will be redesigned and redeveloped to cater to the new requirements of farmers and consumers

The Punjab Agriculture department has dedicated field staff deployed at 136 Mandis (agricultural markets) across the province to collect market pricing data on all seasonal agriculture produce. Currently this data is fed into an online system accessible through a website http://amis.pk
Although large farmers, or those who are internet and computer savvy, are able to extract some value out of the website, the majority population of farmers does not benefit from this information. This is partly due to the Digital Divide and partly due to the non-availability of information through the mobile devices. Making the data available through an effective, inexpensive and pervasive information distribution system will enable the farmers to know what prices are being fetched by agriculture goods in adjacent markets and make better harvesting and selling decisions. The information would also empower the farmers to negotiate with the commission agents for better prices.
Secondly, the data available on the website is delivered through a very rudimentary user interface that does not allow for slicing and dicing the data appropriately, to extract real intelligence and insights of it. The new web site with a better user experience, a lot more visualization and rendering tools, and personalized to each user will vastly improve the usability and effectiveness.
With mobile devices, especially Android based smart phones, becoming increasingly accessible by low-income households, and with the upcoming 3G based mobile communication networks which will make bandwidth availability, there is a compelling case for making this information and insights available on mobile devices as well.
This project, in phase 1, aims to collect the agricultural marketing data through liaison with the Punjab Agriculture Department and develop an information system that is accessible through 4 channels:

The medium of language for each of the User Interface would be as follows:
SMS : Urdu
Smart phones (Apps): English
Web (for Desktops): Urdu and English
Call Center: Urdu and Punjabi

Additionally, the system will be developed as a platform through which additional information useful for the agriculture sector of Pakistan can be easily disseminated through plug-in based information kiosks. Aside from the agricultural marketing data, weather data collected from the Pakistan Meteorology Department regarding weather updates, temperatures, rainfall, wind and hazards will also be included in this first phase as reference implementations of the information kiosks.

Whereas there are electronic trading platforms for various commodities, and portals (such as OLX, Craigslist and Amazon) for sale/exchange/rental of goods, there is no proper portal for sale of farm produce. This project will launch one such platform where information on farmers produce will available for potential consumers. Farmers would be able to either upload the information themselves or through the Call Center. Hence the portal will serve as a Marketing exchange-place for farmers as well.

Information and warnings regarding the natural hazards and approaching extreme weather conditions will be also part of the information available which will be greatly help prevent crops and livestock of the farmers from damage. In particular, the persons whose cell phones will be registered for Alert based service, will be sent SMS based alerts for any extreme likely weather hazards.