El Correo del Agricultor - The farmer’s mail in Bolivia

In Santa Cruz, Bolivia, radio, the internet and email have improved the lives of 14,500 families of peasant farmers who produce 70 per cent of the vegetables consumed in the city of Santa Cruz. The farmers depended on middlemen and brokers to collect and sell their products in Santa Cruz. As the farmers were not aware of the market prices of their produce, they had to accept whatever they were given. Most times farmers were not even able to cover the cost of production.

All that changed with the radio program, El Correo del Agricultor, under the auspices of Instituto de Capacitación del Oriente (ICO). The program provides information for farmers, including the price list for the main agricultural products for that day.

A lady goes to the market very early in the morning to find out the prices and emails the list to the radio station, who broadcast it to the farmers. Don José Burgos, a small producer, says his life has changed since the radio program. “I listen to the radio program every day. It is very helpful for us, small farmers... it permits us to know about the prices in the wholesale markets... It has given us the possibility to discuss the price of our products with the dealers and the middlemen. If the prices that they offer are convenient for us, we have a deal, if not, we may even decide together with other farmers to take our produce to the market by ourselves.”

Don Abigail Toledo is another producer who claims to have benefited. “One morning, we were cutting lettuce to take to the market in Santa Cruz. Although I had a big portion of my land grown with lettuce, we were only cutting a little amount because we had been told that the price of lettuce had gone down a lot in the market the previous week. Then, a buyer arrived in her truck, and this does not happen very often, and she offered to pay 5 Bolivianos for each basket of lettuce. I was ready to accept her offer when a worker of my farm came to me and told me that he had heard on the radio program that the price for a basket of lettuce was 15 Bolivianos in the market of Santa Cruz. If that man hadn’t listened to the ICO radio program I would have given away my lettuce. Thanks to this program I sold my produce at a better price. Since then, we listen to this radio program every day in order to be perfectly informed”.

The program has been broadcast on local radios every Monday to Friday since January 2001. As a result of the programme, the terms of negotiation between the middlemen and the producers have improved tremendously. This in turn has improved the income of thousands of families by at least 10 per cent. The number of farmers who take their produce to the market themselves has also increased.

The program also includes information about environment and sustainable development, and a segment on Health, Nature and Life that deals with natural medicine and local practices. Because of the program, the stories of the farmers from the region have become widely known. This has led to the publishing of a book called “Valles Cruceños. Diagnostico del sector agropecuario” (Valleys of Santa Cruz: Diagnostic test of the agricultural sector), published by Clovis Cárdenas of the ICO. The Health, Nature and Life segment has led to the publishing of two recipe books dealing with natural medicine, traditional practices and local experiences. This is an important documentation as much of this knowledge lay dormant within the elder generation and could have been lost forever.

The program has also led to the improvement in the quality of other local radio programs. Today, the farmers have access to all sorts of more pertinent and relevant information, through the radio, which was formerly dominated by foreign content. They feel more wired and connected and are able to discuss issues that are important to them. The project is being executed with the help of the the Central de Asociaciones de Pequeños Productores de Vallegrande (CAPA).

Story adapted with permission from a story told in “Youth, Poverty Reduction, Gender: ICT for Development Success Stories”, published in November 2003 as part of the Knowledge for Development Series, by Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP), c/o GKP Secretariat, Level 23, Tower 2, MNI Twins, 11 Jalan Pinang, 50450 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email: 

 


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