Pilot for protecting against counterfeit crop protection products

This item ticks all the boxes to be of interest to our network; IP, innovation, agriculture and development.  Using branding to provide quality assurance is an important issue – counterfeit products can be damaging on many levels.  Thanks to Peter Bloch, who designed and is managing this intervention for IFDC, for sending me this post.

ELIMINATION OF FAKE CPPs: PILOT FOR AN EFFECTIVE COUNTERMEASURE.  The following graphic is a simplified representation of the MAS.  (Credit: Kisitu Bruce)

Anecdotal evidence collected across all agribusiness sectors in 12 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa indicates that counterfeit agricultural inputs account for more than 30 percent of all retail agro-input purchases.

Unscrupulous entrepreneurs produce counterfeit pesticide packaging and fill it with inert product, sell inferior grain as quality seed and palm gravel off as fertilizer.  Neither law enforcement agencies nor Ministries of Agriculture nor the private sector have been able to make any real headway in reducing this illegal trading which, according to Felix Jumbe, Executive Director of the Seed Trade Association of Malawi, “makes the poor poorer.”

With support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), IFDC is helping eliminate counterfeit crop protection products (CPPs). IFDC staff members have designed a simple counter-measure and, in partnership with CropLife Africa Middle East (CLAME) and CropLife Uganda, IFDC is launching a pilot program to scientifically test the effectiveness of the methodology. CLAME, a member of CropLife International, is a regional federation representing the plant science industry and a network of national associations in 30 countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Continent-wide, from all countries and cultures, Africans has embraced the mobile phone platform.  SMS and scratch-and-send (for top ups) are very familiar.  In the IFDC/CropLife pilot, the same scratch-and-send label and code will be applied to CPP containers sold through participating outlets in the Ugandan test market.  Using a variety of media, farmers will be told that finally they can purchase CPPs of guaranteed quality.  After purchasing the product, the consumer sends the unique code to an SMS number and receives a “Fake” or “Genuine” response within seconds. This technology is known as a Mobile Authentication Service, or MAS, and the unique codes are generated by an algorithm that is almost impossible to break.  So the real question is:  will farmers be prepared to pay more for a genuine product? (Counterfeit products are usually promoted as “discounted.”)

IFDC has designed a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) program which delivers data in real-time and which will automatically produce  market data reports.  By measuring shifts in market share, IFDC will be able to determine whether the package (MAS + media + training) is indeed effective.

If so, IFDC then would seek to conduct a similar pilot in both the seed and fertilizer sectors with appropriate partners.  It is probable that IFDC and CropLife would expand the CPP intervention across Uganda and then to additional countries.

The pilot is supported by the Uganda Ministry of Agriculture, the Uganda National Agro-Input Dealers Association (UNADA) and the Grameen Foundation.  IFDC will work with Grameen’s Community Knowledge Workers in one of the four pilot zones so that the effectiveness of Grameen’s  grassroots approach to farmer sensitization can be field-tested.  A team of three young Ugandan entrepreneurs from the agricultural, crop protection and software sectors are responsible for on-the-ground coordination and implementation of the pilot project.

Solving this problem will increase agricultural output, especially in the small farm sector, reduce private sector loss and, perhaps more importantly, introduce an element of tangible security into a sector historically plagued by insecurity.

 post written by Peter Bloch

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IFDC is a public international organization addressing critical issues such as international food security, the alleviation of global hunger and poverty, environmental protection and the promotion of economic development and self-sufficiency. IFDC focuses on increasing productivity across the agricultural value chain in developing countries. This is achieved by the creation and transfer of effective and environmentally sound crop nutrient technology and agribusiness expertise. To date, IFDC has provided assistance in over 100 countries.