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Smallholder farmers are the world’s largest group of working-age poor.
Much of the world’s food supply depends on their efforts, yet a lack of
financial services often stymies their attempts to make
productivity-enhancing investments and to smooth their consumption
between periods of plenty and scarcity. Capital-constrained farmers
minimize risk instead of maximizing return.

 

Studies have identified four kinds of financial services that farmers
need to achieve their economic goals: credit, savings, transfer and
payment facilities, and insurance.

 

ICT has created the potential to deliver a greater diversity of
financial products to greater numbers of rural clients than conventional
financial service providers have been able to reach. ICT can also
enhance the government’s capacity to monitor and evaluate financial
services provided to rural clients and design effective financial
policies and regulations for the rural sector. [Source: ICT in Agriculture Sourcebook module 7.]