USSD application

A prior research done indicates that there is various challenges farmers face including unpredictable weather conditions affecting farmers' yields, slow flow of information from the agronomist and meteo Rwanda to the farmers, regionalized weather information, data provided by meteo is hard for farmers to interpret.This project was sponsored by UNDP-Rwanda and organised by Rwanda Meteorology Agency. The aim of this system is to help in fast communication between Rwanda Meteorology Agency, agronomists, famers' facilitators and farmers in meaningful way. The researchers used qualitative methods by conducting an interview with the meteo, agronomist, and farmers. An observation was also used to get first-hand information on the flow of communication betweenmeteo, agronomists, volunteers, farmer facilitators and farmers. Existing Communication was Analyzed andProposed Effiective Kubero Communication Model, which allow faster communication between stakeholders.An Innovative approaches Agile methodology was used to develop a pilot project. A prototype was designed to deliver timely climate related information and predictions to address pressing needs of farmers in climate disaster prone areas. Where farmers will be periodically accessing of clear weather prediction via USSD, together with agronomists' suggestion, so that they can plan a head and a prototype was distributed betweenmeteoRwanda, agronomist, volunteers and farmers for their feedback.Farmers Smart Technology is a three one App, which has Android App, USSD farmer App and Meteo Web App. Agronomist will use Android App to access provincial weather forecast data to provide suggestion to famers. Agronomist can send emergency alert to famers' facilitators. Farmers can retrieve weather forecast data along with agronomist's suggestion in meaningful way using USSD App. Farmers can provide feedback on weather prediction in yes, no or maybe which can help meteorology Agency to improve their prediction. Volunteer will also use USSD App to feed temperatures and rainfall of the day. This Volunteers' data will be accessed by Rwanda Meteorology Agency using Meteo Web App for their approval.The feature that the system provides makes this proposed system an easy to use.

The internet has created a revolution in the methods of engaging billions of people across the globe. Data collection technologies have been further geared by the growing and advancement of smartphones technologies that offer larger screen size, more memory and high computing speed which facilitate capturing of data in short time compared to the time consumed by other methods. Various Technological organizations has created tools like Survey Monkey, Google Forms and others which were effectively used to collect data. However, all except the use of SMS requires an Internet connection which is a limitation for people with classic cellular mobile devices. Hence, Internet access is a major issue as not all mobile devices are connected to the internet. This creates a constrain to data collection and hence a reason to introduce USSD system. This paper is aimed at implementing a USSD data collector applicable across several services with secured backend.

Keyword: USSD, voting, data collection, web, mobile

During early October of 2019, onion price in Bangladesh rose up to 71% per kilogram reaching 1.40 euro/kg. It should have been good news for the farmers who are 9 million in number and major patronizer of economy of Bangladesh. Unfortunately they got nothing and this whole profit went to a small number of intermediaries. They sold the onions to the middlemen at the price of 10-15 cents and consumers had to buy them at the price of 1.40 euro which is unreasonable. This price hike or fixing is inevitable for every crop and vegetable market every year. The price of agricultural product is increasing alarmingly on the contrary farmers are staying poor due to lack of good governance by the government. Currently Bangladesh government is trying to implement E-Governance to every sectors and Ministry of Agriculture is a part of it. Though they are trying to create a digital platform for agriculture, its fruit is not available yet because of not being popular and easily accessible to the farmers. In a country where 40% of its populations is directly dependant on agriculture, almost 13% of whole GDP comes from this sector and food security for 200 million people is dependent on a relatively small cultivable land, good governance is a must for proper utilization of agricultural resources and for the exponential growth of this sector. Bangladesh has one of the least favorable regulatory environments for farmers although the country is still dependent on the agriculture sector for ensuring food security, poverty reduction and job creation [1] .
This essay will try to determine the main problems and solutions to the agricultural sector of Bangladesh with the proper implementation of E-Governance by creating more farmer-centric, easily accessible and free of cost information system via USSD  (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data)  based SMS service.