After spending some time with agents in the field and even with staff of my partner organization, I noticed that product knowledge is a challenge. Agents are there to support rural farmers with their problems. A huge barrier to this was understanding what to use to solve a specific problem.
I actually visited many branches of this organization to observe how managers walk potential customers through the problems on their farms. It was a difficult task. Farmers in Zambia are faced with a large variety of potential problems, from diseases and pests destroying their crop or losing livestock to preventable diseases. The knowledge needed to quickly make recommendations is incredibly complex. There are so many products and problems, and potential substitutions. After analyzing the product data I knew it would take years to understand it all.
One manager was amazing, his customers followed him around the different places he moved in Lusaka because he has years of experience in solving their problems.
This was a level of service that community based agents need to get to when supporting rural farmers. So, I decided to put together a tool to help agents in the field. It’s proven pretty successful with the two agents I’ve tested the tool with.
Below are three examples:
The challenge is: I built these myself, which is great for getting credibility but bad for sustainability. These tools need to be generated internally and maintained by local staff in order for this tool to be useful in the future.
Also, there are other problems that need to be solved so that agents and farmers are better supported. (i.e. internal operations, transportation logistics and customer support). But these changes require longer timeframes and more coordination.
So, my decision was to develop these tools myself. I wanted to output something useful in the shortest time frame that would directly support the agents in the field and farmers. So I will be able to deploy these tools immediately into the field while training local staff to maintain them.
Don’t worry I’m still working on the other problems too 
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