Built a simple SMS tool for farmers, stuck on signups

Hii, this is such a good idea! I know so many farmers who just wait for someone to tell them the price at the market, so this would really help. For the signup problem - have you thought about working with local shopkeepers or M-Pesa agents? A lot of farmers already go to them for daily things. You could give the agent a simple register book, they fill the farmer's name, phone, and crop on paper, then you enter it yourself later. That way the farmer doesn't have to type anything. Plus agents already know their customers so trust is there. The USSD idea is nice too but setting it up needs a developer or a service like Africa's Talking. Might take time. The paper-agent way you can start this week with just a notebook. Asanteni for building this!

That agent idea is solid and you can literally start tomorrow with a notebook and a pen. If you want to try USSD later without learning to code from scratch: check out Africa's Talking or Safaricom's APIs -- they have simple docs and you can get a test number in a few days. But for now, maybe test a "missed call" approach: farmers dial a specific number, it rings once and drops, your system calls them back and reads out options with voice prompts. No typing at all. Keep it simple first, scale later.

The agent idea is super practical and I’ve actually done something similar for my boutique when I wanted to collect phone numbers for promo texts. I gave a simple notebook to a few shopkeepers near the market, they wrote down names and numbers for a small commission. It worked way better than expecting people to type. For your case, maybe try agrovet shops where farmers already buy seeds or inputs. They see the same faces every week, so trust is already there. Start with one shop and see how it goes.

This is a great problem to have, means people actually want to use it. The agent idea from above can get you going fast, but if you want something the farmer can do alone with zero typing: try a simple SMS keyword like "BEANS" sent to a shortcode or even your personal number. Your system just has to look at the sender's number and the keyword, no complex formatting. You can test it with a cheap Safaricom line and a basic Node.js script that reads incoming texts. Let me know if you want a rough example of how to set that up. Also, how are you getting the market price data itself? That part interests me too.