Dr. Ilahiane's talk will examine ways Moroccan smallholder farmers deploy mobile phones to revise their relationship with markets and roving middlemen and how mobile phone use has transformed farmers' economic behavior.

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A similar story is seen in smartphone use. In 2013-14, about a quarter of people in emerging and developing economies reported owning a smartphone, i.e., a mobile phone that can access the internet and apps. By 2017, that share had risen to 42%. Among the advanced economies, 72% report owning a smartphone in 2017, the same rate as in 2015-16.

The pattern of smartphone ownership is similar to internet use, with people in wealthier countries exhibiting higher rates of ownership. But the gap in smartphone ownership is narrower than in the past, as many move directly from not owning a phone at all to owning a mobile device. Landline phones are simply being skipped by large numbers of people in emerging and developing markets.

In this article, I examine how and to what effect mobile telephony is used by smallholder farmers in the Saharan frontier of south-eastern Morocco. Specifically, I investigate how farmers use mobile phones to redefine market information asymmetries between them and footloose middlemen more easily than before. Clifford Geertz (1979) described the suq as a place where the search for information is the name of the game. He argued that the lack of reliable market information in the suq was channelled through bargaining and intensive information searches. In this article, I argue, in contrast to some of Geertz's insights, that mobile phones have allowed farmers to shift their economic behaviour from a mode of intensive search to a mode of extensive search in which they canvass widely and make decisions based on known produce prices in different market areas. Thus, in leveraging extensive searches, clientalisation and bargaining are no longer as important for farmers as they used to be in the pre-mobile phone era.

This article consists of five sections. The first section provides a theoretical framework of the mobile phone in the farming economy. The second provides a background on smallholder farming in the Ziz River Valley of south-eastern Morocco. The third describes my research methods and findings. The fourth deals with the mobile phone and the spirit of entrepreneurialism. Finally, the last section delves into the use of the mobile phone for information search and the levelling of information asymmetry between farmers and middlemen.

This article draws on ethnographic research on mobile phone use and economic productivity of smallholder farmers in southeast Morocco. It examines the way the mobile phone is put to economic use to create and augment business opportunities and social networks. It also investigates daily calling practices of users by analysing incoming and outgoing logs of voice calls, the proportion of personal and business voice calls, and trends of landline phone usage. The research methods underlying this study are primarily ethnographic in nature. Employing the ethnographic practice of participant observation and structured interviews, I spent the summers of 2003, 2012, and 2016 developing a richly detailed understanding of the role of mobile phones as tools for economic development by focusing on their role among farmers in rural Morocco. I spent time with these farmers while they engaged in their trade or work activities. I visited their homes and farms multiple times, and I attended Friday prayers with some of them. I also went to the weekly suq or market with some of the farmers.

To gain a broad understanding of the context of mobile phones in the lives of farmers, I collected information on the presence of traditional modes and means of social contact and media use. With respect to ownership of traditional technologies of communication and mobility, the mean number of bicycles per farmer surveyed was 2.5, mopeds stood at 1.5, video players stood at 0.25, radios at 2.17, television sets at 2.25, and satellite dishes at 1.6. For comparison, the average number of mobile phones per farmer surveyed is 2.33 and the number of mobile phones acquired over the last five years is 2.82. While none owns a personal computer and access to the internet is insignificant, all farmers had mobile phones, and four had a complementary landline at home; internet access was limited to the use of cyber cafes.

Another important change was that farmers used their new knowledge to become more market oriented in their production, moved away from producing low-value crops, and diversified into higher-value enterprises. Of the survey sample, 40 per cent of respondents planned to cultivate cash crops (mostly vegetables and fruits); 20 per cent planned to increase the acreage devoted to alfalfa as it constitutes the main feed for livestock (sheep and cattle); and 35 per cent planned to plant olives, dates, apples, almonds, walnuts, and other market-friendly trees. The knowledge gained from using the mobile phone enabled farmers to take risks (za'aama) on crop planting and marketing. As one carrot farmer put it: al-portable kay eza'aam (the mobile phone stimulates risk-taking) or za'aama (when it comes to planning crop planting and response to market signals and needs).

one mobile phone equals the work of 10 people in the chain of production and having and using a mobile is having peace of mind. Middlemen or sbaybiyah are thieves and a source of incessant al-waswas (anxiety). With the availability of produce storage facilities and market information brought by the mobile, I no longer sell produce on trees (stand sale). I only sell produce on trees when it is a bad production.

Likewise, for Moha, the use of the mobile means time is saved, less money is spent on transportation, and more information about the inghmisen n-suq (market information) is gathered in real-time. He adds that,

with the mobile phone, your payment is guaranteed (tadmant rzaq nnak); the never-ending problem of the middlemen (ikkas lmashakil n'sbaybiya) is removed. Because of dishonesty (qallat al-ma'qul or ikhudaan) and fraudulent practices of middlemen, I was the victim of three bad checks from different greedy middlemen before the advent of the mobile phone. Now with the mobile, my payment is guaranteed because the mobile number of the buyer is trackable, and I also do not have to sell my produce to middlemen. Also, a loss of 10 per cent to dishonest buyers is still better than empty or bad checks.

Farmers reported that the mobile phone enabled them to renegotiate the terms of information asymmetry and unequal trade relationships between sellers and buyers, something they could not previously do. Additionally, for many in my study the mobile incentivised them to take the path of niyyah mazyanah and al-tawakkul to expand their farming operations by enabling them to become risk-takers, leaders, and pioneers, allowing them to be more active in farming decision-making processes and engagement of trading relationships. The mobile allowed them to act as both a farmer and as their own agent in business relationships. It allowed them to level the playing field of information asymmetry and empowered them to remove deceptive payment practices they suffered over the decades, thereby, they were empowered to develop new farming strategies, add value to their crops, and raise their farming incomes.

Undeniably, farmers have exploited and pioneered the coordination and organisation capabilities of the mobile phone. They obtain real-time market pricing information via mobile phones, saving time and travel, making them better-informed about where and at what price to sell their products, thereby raising their incomes and improving the sustainability of their livelihoods. Farmers value mobile phones as fast and convenient ways to communicate with various stakeholders in the agricultural value chain and to get prompt answers with respect to problems they face in growing crops and raising livestock. The mobile phone also creates opportunities relative to getting marketing and weather information. Through mobile phones, farmers can directly keep in touch with many clients in various marketplaces and offer their produce at competitive prices.

Among farmers using mobile phones, Geertz's insights regarding suq bargaining and information search practices seem not to remain entirely true, as illustrated in many stories from my contacts. Information asymmetry in the past has made farmers vulnerable to middlemen and has hampered their access to key information on farming, transportation, and marketing. Every one of my respondents had a story about how the mobile phone is not just a means of knowing what is happening in local and non-local markets but also a major driver behind their decisions to alter the terms of bargaining and flatten information asymmetry in the marketplace. In fact, the mobile phone appears to blur the distinction between intensive/clientalised and extensive modalities of information search. As a communication channel used for gathering information on prices of goods and manipulation of variations in different marketplaces by the now always-accessible farmer, the mobile phone succeeds in affecting bargaining and the balance of power in the farmer to middleman relationship. Viewed through this lens, the mobile phone has allowed farmers to shift their economic behaviour from a mode of intensive search, establishing enduring trade relationships with specific buyers, to a mode of extensive search, in which farmers canvass widely and make decisions based on known prices of produce in different markets and areas. With the use of the mobile phone, farmers are empowered to engage in extensive searches for high intensity partners without competing for the same partner; and in leveraging extensive searches, clientalisation and market bargaining are no longer as important as they used to be in the pre-mobile phone era. As the traditional market information situation shifts in favour of farmers, they are likely to force middlemen into competition with each other because farmers are now engaged in extensive searches rather than intensive ones. Thereby, farmers are well positioned not only to extract favourable prices from different partners in different marketplaces for their produce, but in some cases, they may cut out the middlemen from the chain of produce marketing (see Geertz 1979; see also Greenberg and Park 2017; Napora 2011). 2351a5e196

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