The Soil Will Save Us
by Kristin Ohlson · 14 Oct 2014
program sent farmers direct payments based on the number of acres they had farmed in the 1980s, regardless of market conditions. Another automatically sent farmers a check when prices dropped. The payout soared even higher. American farmers received more than they ever had: $20 billion annually from 1999 to 2001. The consequence of
Imagining India
by Nandan Nilekani · 25 Nov 2008 · 777pp · 186,993 words
Internet community centers and kiosks, for instance, offer low-cost computing and networking services across villages, and ITC’s 7000 e-Choupal centers allow farmers to check commodity prices and sell crops online. “We have become the one-stop shop for literally everything,” Sriram tells me. “From caste certificates to English language training
The fortune at the bottom of the pyramid
by C. K. Prahalad · 15 Jan 2005 · 423pp · 149,033 words
turn these pages, you will discover companies fighting disease with educational campaigns and innovative products. There are organizations helping the handicapped walk and helping subsistence farmers check commodity prices and connect with the rest of the world. There are banks adapting to the financial needs of the poor, power companies reaching out to
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, ITC, an Indian conglomerate, decided to connect Indian farmers with PCs in their villages. The ITC e-Choupal (literally, “village meeting place”) allowed the farmers to check prices not only in the local auction houses (called mandis), but also prices of soybean futures at the Chicago Board of Trade. The e-Choupal network
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mandis and decide when and where to sell their crops. ITC decided to build a system that changed many of the existing practices. The farmers could check prices and decide at what prices they wanted to sell. They were not at the mercy of the auctioneers at the mandi on a particular day
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by going directly to the villages, providing the village with a PC and training the lead farmer (sanchalak) to operate the PC. The farmers are able to check the prices at various mandis (as opposed to the one closest to their village or the one to which they happen to go), and decide
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, and farm equipment, to flow through the same system. The farmers are able to use the Internet connections to evaluate their positions. One farmer started to check the prices of soybeans on the Chicago Board of Trade and based his pricing on that information. Farmers learned to connect to the rest of the
The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
by William Easterly · 1 Mar 2006
no state intervention, with no structural adjustment or shock therapy to promote cell phones. These are not just consumer pleasures. Cell phones help farmers, fishers, and entrepreneurs check out prices, suppliers, and consumers; arrange meetings; transfer funds; and lots of other things that are logistical nightmares in societies without good landline phones, functional
Derivatives Markets
by David Goldenberg · 2 Mar 2016 · 819pp · 181,185 words
City on July 14, 2014 for the number of bushels he wishes to sell. Assume that number is 500,000 bushels. ■ CONCEPT CHECK 1 a. What price would the wheat farmer receive for his 500,000 bushels if he sold his wheat in the July 14, 2014 forward market on March 13, 2014