Rakhine Winter Crop Project – research into farmers’ app, Myanmar

Asper was commissioned by Catalpa International to understand user requirements and existing agricultural apps in Myanmar by working with Catalpa’s Senior UX Designer. This work was undertaken as part of the Rakhine Winter Crops Project’s (RWCP) ate promote  Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) to commercial vegetable and commercial field crop CFC farmers.

GAP farming requires the application of appropriate levels of different inputs (e.g. high quality seed, fertiliser, bokashi) aimed at improving soil health and fertility thereby improving farmer yields and income. RWCP has developed guidelines on the type and level of inputs that are required for a 0.06 acre plot of different vegetables (more than 20 vegetable crops), as well a one acre of field crops (notably groundnuts).

RWCP has collated paper-based order forms from farmers, inputted these into an Excel spreadsheet, aggregated orders up and then placed orders either with inputs suppliers in Yangon or with local agro-dealers. Unfortunately, farmers are not always literate or numerate, while local agro-dealers do not have computers and are not literate in programmes like Excel. RWCP therefore needed to find an alternative way of automating the GAP inputs ordering system to make ordering as simple and efficient as possible for farmers and agro-dealers, while also reducing the risk of error inherent in paper-based systems. This was the purpose of this assignment.