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JJ ....求確認~~
本月通信技术考的是不是這個??
In a forthcoming paper*, Aparajita Goyal of the World Bank has carried out a corresponding study for the internet by examining how the gradual introduction of internet kiosks providing price information affected the market for soyabeans in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Farmers in the region sell their soyabeans to intermediaries in open auctions at government-regulated wholesale markets called mandis, a system that was set up in order to protect farmers from unscrupulous buyers. The intermediaries then sell on the produce to food-processing companies. The problem with this approach for the farmers is that the traders have a far better idea about the prices prevailing in different markets and being offered by processing companies. With only a few traders at each mandi, they can easily collude to ensure that they pay less than the fair market price; they can then boost their profits by selling on the beans at a higher price.
ITC Limited, an Indian company that is one of the largest buyers of soyabeans, felt it was paying over the odds, but was unable to monitor the traders closely. Starting in October 2000 it began to introduce a network of internet kiosks, called e-choupal, in villages in Madhya Pradesh. (Choupal means “village gathering place” in Hindi.) By the end of 2004 a total of 1,704 kiosks had been set up, each of which served its host village and four others within a five-kilometre (three-mile) radius. The kiosks displayed the minimum and maximum price paid for soyabeans at 60 mandis, updated once a day, along with agricultural information and weather forecasts. ITC also posted the price it was prepared to pay for soyabeans of a particular quality bought direct from farmers at 45 “hubs” (mostly in the same towns as mandis). By setting up the kiosks, ITC enabled farmers to check that the prices being offered at their local mandi were in line with prices elsewhere. It also gave them the option to sell direct.
All this supports the anecdotal evidence that the internet can indeed make agricultural markets more efficient, just as mobile phones can. But whereas the expansion of mobile-phone access is now rapid and commercially self-sustaining—even very poor farmers can benefit from having a phone, and find the money to buy one—the same is not true of the internet. Its use requires a higher degree of literacy, for one thing, and computers cost more than handsets. The e-choupal approach, in which a company pays for the kiosks, offers one model; another is for entrepreneurs to resell access to the internet from village kiosks, which is how mobile phones first caught on. Ms Qiang’s figures suggest that in the long run, the internet could have an even greater impact on economic growth than mobile phones did. But that will depend upon finding sustainable business models to encourage its spread in the poorest parts of the world.
http://www.economist.com/node/15211578 |
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发表于 2011-9-30 12:03:38
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