Yo Agricultor
SMS agricultural information for Chile's small farmers
The challenge
Chile's small maize, berry, wine-grape, and honey producers worked without timely market prices, weather and pest alerts, or technical assistance. The information existed – it just never reached the countryside in a form farmers could use.
What we built
Yo Agricultor, an initiative of FIA – the innovation agency of Chile's Ministry of Agriculture – with support from the Inter-American Development Bank, delivered prices, climate and pest alerts, and technical guidance by SMS, so a basic phone was enough. The Zoltner Consulting Group led the mobile-content strategy: a participatory, four-phase methodology that built the service around farmer feedback rather than assumptions, paired with a web platform organizing each crop's full season into a step-by-step itinerary.
The training library
Alongside the SMS service, ZCG produced a library of short farmer-training videos across the four crops – how to plan a maize sowing, harvest honey, manage a vineyard, transport raspberries. The library is still being watched: individual clips have passed 100,000 views, and the collection has drawn well over a million views on YouTube.
