This article examines an ICT-based intervention (known as the DrumNet project) that has succeeded in integrating smallholder-resource and poor farmers into a higher value agricultural chain. The article assesses the design of the project, and how it resolves the smallholder farmers’ idiosyncratic market failures and examines member-farmers’ marketing margins. The article finds that the design of the DrumNet project resolves smallholder farmers’ credit, insurance and information market failures and enables them to overcome organizational failure. The article concludes that successful ICT-based interventions for integrating farmers into higher value agricultural value chains require an integrated approach to tackling smallholder farmers’ constraints. The findings have implications for the design of future ICT-based interventions in agriculture.

In many developing countries smallholder farmer participation in agricultural input and output markets continues to be constrained by lack of market information. Actors in most developing country markets operate under conditions of information asymmetry which increases the costs of doing business and locks out smallholder farmers. Attempts to address this problem are currently focusing on the use of ICT technologies to provide market information and link farmers to markets. This study examines the awareness and use of one such technology – mobile phones. It finds for male and female smallholder farmers in Kenya a high level of awareness and widespread use of mobile phones, mainly for social purposes. This study further finds that a low level of education, the cost of mobile phone airtime recharge vouchers and the lack of electricity for recharging phone batteries are the major impediments to the ownership and use of mobile phones, with female farmers more constrained than males. A high awareness of mobile phones among smallholder farmers presents an opportunity to strengthen smallholder farmers’ market linkage. However constraints to the usage of mobile phones will need to be addressed. The study findings indicate priorities for policymakers dealing with the specifics of ICT adoption as a tool to promote rural viability via rationalization of Kenyan agricultural markets.

This article examines an ICT-based intervention (known as the DrumNet project) that has succeeded in integrating smallholder-resource and poor farmers into a higher value agricultural chain. The article assesses the design of the project, and how it resolves the smallholder farmers’ idiosyncratic market failures and examines member-farmers’ marketing margins. The article finds that the design of the DrumNet project resolves smallholder farmers’ credit, insurance and information market failures and enables them to overcome organizational failure. The article concludes that successful ICT-based interventions for integrating farmers into higher value agricultural value chains require an integrated approach to tackling smallholder farmers’ constraints. The findings have implications for the design of future ICT-based interventions in agriculture.