Phoning in farming: economic benefits of rice farmers in the Philippines from mobile phone use

Evidence-based research on how mobile phones are economically benefiting rice farmers are still lacking despite the proliferation of mobile phone projects nowadays. In order to fill this knowledge gap which is important in developing projects that are more effective in promoting development among individual farmers, this research gathered both qualitative and quantitative data through in-depth interviews with 100 farmers from 10 provinces of the Philippines. Results showed that mobile phone use helped 42 farmers solve problems on difficult and costly access to information sources while it helped 28 farmers solve problems on low productivity because of inadequate knowledge on efficient rice technologies. The direct economic benefits in the form of savings is as much as PhP730 while the increase in income through better farming is as much as PhP39,000. Through correlation analysis, this study shows that the acquisition of savings on knowledge search cost is affected by the distance of the farmer's house to the DA office and farm expenses. In contrast the distance of the farm to the DA office and nearest rice mill, the provincial rice production (volume and area), and the farm village urban/rural classification determine the acquisition of benefits on input productivity. Results of the regression analysis show that the magnitude of farmers' savings from mobile phone use is affected by the distance of their house to the DA office, the volume of provincial rice production, and the farm village rural/urban classification; while the magnitude of benefit on input productivity is affected by farm yield. This study thus shows that mobile telephony could help farmers increase production efficiency depending on their circumstances. Although economic benefits are not very high, they are still significant especially for low-income farmers and the indirect benefits such as the saved time from farming provides more opportunity for higher economic benefits.