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Last year, the GSM Association (GSMA), the representative body of mobile phone network operators worldwide, reported that mobile penetration in Africa had reached 649 million subscribers – equivalent to around 65% of people – and was expected to reach more than 735 million by the end of 2012. It's a similar story in India, which already has 70 subscriptions per 100 people, with 53% of households owning a mobile phone.

The SMS function offered by even the most basic handset can be used to provide data to farmers that they previously would not have had access to. Instant updates on weather and wholesale crop prices, for example, can improve productivity and negotiating positions. A World Bank report earlier this year described mobile networks as "a unique and unparalleled opportunity to give rural smallholders access to information that could transform their livelihoods".

But who is driving this, and how? One trend in recent years has been the growth of large-scale, branded commercial SMS services for farmers. Reuters Market Light and Nokia Life both offer subscription-based services to farmers, using SMS to send information on crop prices, weather conditions, and general farming tips. Reuters Market Light claims to have 1 million registered users across 50,000 villages in India, while Nokia Life reports that 76 million people had "experienced" its service in India, China, Indonesia and Nigeria by August 2012.

Encouraged by the demand, India's National Agricultural and Rural Development Bank (Nabard) announced a pilot project of its own in September 2012, offering a free service to more than 50,000 farmers in the state of Maharashtra.

At the other end of the scale, there are dozens of smaller, locally-grown projects delivering SMS services to farmers. Kiwanja.net offers an open-source tool – FrontlineSMS – which was designed as a free SMS communications system for development projects and has been used effectively in very specific contexts: pastoralists in northern Kenya have used it to access local crop and livestock prices, for example. Its founder, Ken Banks, sees the greatest development value emerging out of these local applications. "Conditions are often different between regions and an all-purpose, blanket service doesn't always provide the most accurate or useful information to local farmers," he says. "Prices vary considerably, and access to markets provides different levels of challenge."

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Banks identifies trust as another key issue: if farmers already know an NGO providing an SMS service, they are more likely to trust the information. "The NGO will likely better know the history, conditions and challenges of the area, and be better placed to collect and provide more accurate advice on cropping, crop disease, markets, market prices, and so on."

Reuters Market Light does provide very localised data, but remains broadly a top-down style of information delivery. This needn't be the case: development projects can just as easily use SMS technology as a collaborative tool. Kenya's M-Farm, for instance, charges farmers 10 Kenyan shillings (7p) to simply check local market prices by SMS, but it also has a feature that enables them to band together to buy and sell collectively, empowering them within the supply chain.

The technology can also capture and share farmers' existing knowledge. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDS), for example, is funding a collaborative SMS-based project between the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, and an Indian NGO, the Chennakeshava Trust, in which participating farmers are actively involved in providing data.

"It's about 20% delivery of information, such as weather and prices," says Hendrik Knoche, the project developer at EPFL. "The rest of the information shared is based on data entered by the farmers, on the varieties they sow, their use of fertiliser, irrigation, spraying, harvesting, and selling, including the price achieved. The data entered is shared with other farmers so they can find out more about fertilizer and pesticide use from their peers."

As mobile networks expand, so too are associated services such as mobile payment systems. This is opening up new avenues for using SMS to deliver ancillary services to farmers, going beyond price and weather data to allow the purchase of microinsurance, for example.

Kilimo Salama, a microinsurance programme developed by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, allows farmers to insure a $2 bag of seeds for 10 cents – using their phone. Farmers buy the insurance from a local stockist who scans a quick-response code; the farmer then gets an SMS with the policy number. The system is linked to the M-Pesa mobile payment system, so when a payout is due, farmers receive it directly by SMS. To date Kilimo Salama (Swahili for "safe farming") has insured 73,000 farmers in Kenya and Rwanda.

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Co-founder Rose Goslinga sees the system as giving small-scale farmers the confidence to grow big. "Making investments without covering risks that could endanger a good harvest is something that farmers are very aware of, and makes them wary of investing at all," she says. "Climate change has added to that, making farmers more aware of risks as rains seem more erratic than before."

The next stage, inevitably, will be a switch to smartphones, with camera and GPS features potentially strengthening small-scale farmers even further. In October 2012, Samsung announced plans for a major push on smartphone devices in sub-Saharan Africa – but it may be a few years before they reach rural producers.

"SMS tools require little training, but expecting a farmer to install an app relies on him knowing how to do this from some other activity," says Goslinga. "That said, the new generation of farmers definitely know how to download a song, so if app developers can make insurance apps as simple and attractive as that, it could work."

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