Telpaneca telecom center promotes development in the region

After having assessed the evolution of the different needs of the populations in the region of Telpaneca, TSF set up a new project with the Telpaneca telecom community centre as focal point for the first semester 2012: the creation of an information and communication network for agricultural data (coffee, corn, red beans, fertilizers, production advice) for the benefit of farm cooperatives and villages  around Telpaneca.

Since the beginning of the project 36,740 have been exchanged. The forms sent are the following:

Objectives: favor the transmission of key information to farmers in the region of Telpaneca.

Beneficiaries: 3 cooperatives in the region of Telpaneca (La Union, Gaspar Garcia Laviana and UPCO) for a total of 320 beneficiaries.

Nicaragua is a privileged country. It benefits from a very diverse climate, allowing the production of many products easily sold in the international market. Coffee is one of the products generating the highest incomes and supporting the economy in the country. Its culture represents 25% of the farmable lands dedicated to exportation. According to experts, coffee generates a third of the rural employment and enables the development of communities within the country, limiting the national and international migration.

The socio-economic crisis highly affected coffee- producing countries. Although the global supply exceeds the demand, the coffee price in New York stock exchange is still decreasing and has reached its lowest level for the last 100 years. The income and volume of coffee exportations have respectively decreased of 36,4% and 45,4% in 2011-2012. Some of the poorest producers are forced to sell their crops at lower prices than the international market. The Global Coffee Organization estimates that the average cost of coffee production is 0,65$/lb., which obliges some producers to abandon their plantations, to burn a part of their crops, or at best, to store them until more favorable prices. Thus, many farmers in Nicaragua live with less than 3USD per day.

Télécoms Sans Frontières has created a dissemination and information network based on FrontlineSMS technology to analyze the international coffee price in New York stock exchange. This system will help the decision-making of the cooperatives selling coffee to export companies such as Atlantic S.A. and CISA Export. The information system also integrates technical assistance sent via SMS, to specialized technical organisms (like MAGFOR) and cooperatives or producers. The producers receive the price of coffee and other foodstuffs in the stock exchange (beans, corn…), technical advice for the crops and the kind/price of fertilizers.

Telpaneca telecom community centre will be at the heart of this information network, in charge of the dissemination of key information (prices of coffee, fertilizers, etc.) twice a day by SMS to 3 cooperatives, representing 320 beneficiaries.

The information system set up by TSF will:
- Improve the economic and technical and scientific information sharing between cooperatives and partners
- Promote and transform Telpaneca telecom community centre into a research center for cooperatives
- Reinforce the capacities of producers by increasing their knowledge of the market demands and the exchange rate of coffee