Accelerating Digital Transformation in Agriculture

Author: Sander Janssen

Publish Date: 11 October 2021

Digital technologies have strong potential to support the transformation of agriculture, building a resilient, sustainable and inclusive agrifood system [1]. As key enablers, digital innovations can play a catalytic role – especially in the wake of COVID-19 – by improving the capacity of small-scale producers (SSPs) to adapt to external shocks and increasing productivity and profitability. With more than 33 million smallholder farmers and pastoralists [2] already registered on such platforms, sub-Saharan Africa alone has seen a rapid increase in the adoption of digital solutions, recording an annual growth of 44 per cent over the three-year period ending in 2018. Despite a rapid expansion of the digitalisation for agriculture (D4Ag) sector across low-and-middle income countries, the reach and sustainable use of D4Ag solutions remains fairly low, especially among SSPs. Only 13 per cent of smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa are registered for any digital service and far fewer are actively using such services [3]. Inadequate access to the Internet and digital services, coupled with issues of affordability, disability and a growing digital divide, are among factors that have widened the disconnect. One of the main barriers holding back investment in D4Ag solutions and their impact at scale is lack of cost-effective ways of comparing and contrasting solutions, and making informed decisions on which ones will really work.

Promoting alliances and investments

Despite a highly complex and fragmented digital sector, there is significant potential for establishing sustainable partnerships and investments. For this reason, there is a growing need for greater coordination of D4Ag solutions and their overarching ecosystem, but how best to achieve this?

Stewart Collis from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), says that Digital Agri Hub (the Hub) can play an important role in driving D4Ag solutions for small-scale producers: “Evidence suggests bundled digital farmer services positively impact small-scale producers’ livelihoods by improving access to inputs, information on managing crops and livestock, obtaining climate mitigating finance and insurance and accessing markets. Digital Agri Hub will collate the essential data necessary to understand which combinations of services are reaching men and women small-scale producers at scale with impact, and act as a guide for investment and adoption of the most impactful digital agriculture products, solutions and services.”

Josh Woodard from The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) adds: "As the number of digital solutions in the agricultural sector continues to grow, the Digital Agri Hub will allow practitioners to make more informed decisions and bring clarity to a fragmented information landscape. We're excited by the potential for greater impact as a result of a more cohesive digital agriculture space."

Convinced of the scope for digital technologies in the agriculture sector, FCDO, BMGF and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are co-funding the Hub to monitor and track the development of digital for agriculture solutions, and their impact in helping to achieve a climate-resilient, sustainable and inclusive food system. Responding to the direct needs of the diverse stakeholder groups that play an active role in D4Ag will be an important focus for the Hub. To this end, it has conducted a needs assessment, with the aim of identifying, unpacking and addressing the major needs for each of the different actors on the pathway towards the sustainable growth of the sector.

The emerging issues

Across the nine identified stakeholder groups, made up of donors, (impact) investors, D4Ag solution providers, agri-food value chain actors, agritech companies, innovation repositories, policy makers and direct implementers (farmers’ organizations and non-governmental organisations), a broad range of issues has emerged. Tomaso Ceccarelli, the lead coordinator on this Ecosystem coordination activity from the Digital Agri Hub team, observes that: “Stakeholders have different perspectives and goals. But there is one trait that unites most of them, and this is the need for a structured overview on initiatives and reliable insights on the impact of D4Ag.”

Gigi Gatti from Grameen Foundation USA – one of the Digital Agri Hub partners – says that: “It is essential to work with existing D4Ag networks and Communities of Practice to understand how to best connect them to the Hub.”

Responding to these diverse needs is a key success parameter for the Hub, integrating such crucial and different perspectives in its programme of work. Simona Benvenuti from the Netherlands Advisory Board on Impact Investing (NAB) – a Digital Agri Hub partner – experiences that "to accelerate the mobilization of private-sector capital into D4Ag it is critical to provide impact-based data on existing D4Ag solutions and insights to mitigate investment risk, thus facilitating collaboration amongst the different types of capital providers and knowledge exchange globally across the value chain".

Daniele Tricarico, from GSMA, also a Digital Agri Hub partner, has closely assessed the development of the D4Ag sector and worked with a number of different solution providers in collaboration with mobile operators. From his perspective, "it is exciting to see a growing number of D4AG services coming to market, but this fast-paced sector also experiences a high level of fragmentation and many short-lived initiatives. It is therefore crucial to quickly identify emerging best practices and highlight the operational and business models that can support truly sustainable, scalable solutions".

Inclusion for all stands out as a critical prerequisite for the sustainable development of D4Ag. In support, Eunice Likoko, from Wageningen University and Research (WUR), adds that: “For women and marginalised groups, improved access to D4Ag solutions will be stimulated by understanding and addressing the barriers they face in accessing digital solutions. Intervention strategies need to go beyond minimal participation of excluded groups, to adopt more empowering approaches that address underlying barriers to promote sustainable and realistic adoption of digital solutions for these groups’’.

A hub for inclusive agricultural transformation

To ensure the strong and sustainable growth of the D4Ag sector, a better tracking mechanism will be central to the success of Digital Agri Hub, while supporting the everyday decision-making process of D4Ag actors across the agrifood system. Whether the decision is to partner with another D4Ag solution provider, to invest in a D4Ag solution, to create awareness and stimulate the development of the sector in a particular country, or to invest in digital developments for societal impact, access to insights, data and knowledge is crucial. It is Digital Agri Hub’s firm intention to truly act as a hub, bringing partners together, creating capacity and connecting actors to one another, helping them to share their insights and best practices towards inclusive agricultural transformation.

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[1] World Bank, 2019. Future of Food: Harnessing Digital Technologies to Improve Food System Outcomes (available here).
[2] 13% of all sub-Saharan African smallholders and pastoralists and up to 45% of smallholder households, depending on assumptions used to calculate penetration.
[3] D4Ag solutions refer to the digitally enabled business models and technologies to address farmers and food system actors’ constraints (e.g. around market access, inputs, financing and climate).

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AUTHOR: MARA HECKMANN

PUBLISH DATE: 11 DECEMBER 2023

Scaling digital agricultural extension and advisory services for smallholder farmers in developing countries has proven to be a complex puzzle. Despite having the potential to provide valuable information to smallholder farmers and transform agricultural markets, many of these services have struggled to gain widespread adoption. Most of them remain in the pilot phase, facing substantial scaling challenges such as low digital literacy, limited infrastructure, and language barriers. Across the agriculture value chain intermediaries act as facilitators and agents in a transaction that involves two or more parties. While there are many different types of intermediaries (organisational, technological), human intermediaries acting in the supply chain comprise individuals working directly with farmers, such as extension agents, middlemen, agro-dealers, and leaders of farmer organizations. These intermediaries are interesting to look at as they continue to play a crucial role in connecting smallholder farmers to markets. It is crucial to leverage their local expertise and strengths to design effective digital extension and advisory services. This raises the question of whether to combine the strengths of human intermediaries with digital technology to overcome challenges in scaling digital extension and advisory services for agriculture. This article explores innovative ways to involve intermediaries in the design of digital extension and advisory services, leveraging their strengths and local expertise.

Leveraging intermediaries’ well-established relationships with farmers

A look into existing literature has revealed that one of the major obstacles to increasing the uptake of digital extension and advisory services is that farmers often prefer face-to-face interaction over anonymous phone-based communication. To build trust and offer context-specific services, it's essential to combine digital advice with agent guidance through in-person meetings with familiar representatives who understand the farmers and their land. Digital extension and advisory services can also pivot towards partnerships with farmer cooperatives and networks for executing field-level tasks and overcoming scaling challenges. Leveraging the influence of leaders from farmer organizations, who are well-known and possess higher social capital, can build trust among farmers, overcome literacy barriers, and drive technology adoption. An example is the Plantwise Plus programme, which aims to enhance accessibility to user-friendly decision support tools and information, empowering advisors and farmers to make well-informed decisions in their crop management practices. It collaborates with local agricultural advisory and extension providers, offering up-to-date information and digital tools to improve the capacity of farmer advisory in smallholder communities.

Leveraging Intermediaries’ Skills, Expertise and Social Network

Another challenge is the high levels of illiteracy among farmers, limiting their ability to use Information and Communication Technologies and access the information they offer. To overcome this barrier, trusted local intermediaries can act as bridges for delivering SMS-based information to farmers. When the complexity of services is managed by an extension agent or a tech-savvy individual of the family, this frees up resources for farmers and enhances the perceived usefulness of technology-based services. Furthermore, addressing the issue of low service availability in local languages is essential. Extension agents and trained advisors can play a crucial role in translating information and agro-advice into the native language of farmers, and supporting them with interpreting the data, tailored to their local context. An example is the multilingual information and capacity building service, which disseminates global and local access to high-quality farmer-to-farmer training videos to farmers and extension service providers worldwide in local languages. To overcome connectivity barriers, scholars also suggest using more contextually appropriate offline apps. For instance, AgriCoach is a digital application providing last-mile agricultural extension information. It assists in determining the optimal timing, crop selection, and cultivation methods for the best agricultural outcomes. The platform operates predominantly offline, addressing connectivity challenges, and delivers pest, disease, and weather updates in local languages, as well as French and English. Due to the low extension officer-to-farmer ratio in some rural areas, scholars propose two alternative types of intermediaries to reach smallholder farmers: Youth and Agro dealers. Family, friends, neighbours, and local input dealers are often farmers' top-ranked sources of information and they enjoy a high degree of trust. By collaborating with these intermediaries and providing them with training, they can transform into conduits for agricultural guidance to small-scale farmers and utilise new practices and innovations on their farms.

Leveraging intermediaries’ data collection capabilities

Challenges to scaling extension and advisory services often relate to financial sustainability and heavy reliance on donor funding. This is why some services shifted their business model to offer bundles of services to cross-subsidise their advisory service from revenues generated by selling data, offering analytical services and partnering with organisations and research institutions. However, the lack of availability and access to high-quality data remains an obstacle. One of the key activities of these bundled services is establishing a network of field agents who register the farmer and collect farm-specific data points. These field agents can support with collecting data which creates intelligence for the service owner, generating a huge amount of data for customising advisory and for partners to optimise their operations. An example is TaroWorks LLC, incubated by the Grameen Foundation, a mobile web platform that enables agribusiness and extension service providers to connect with farmers in hard-to-reach rural areas. It works offline to help extension workers collect and use data for informed decision-making. It collaborates with organizations and non-profits that run extension programs, charging an annual license fee based on unique app logins.

A way ahead: A complementarity of human intermediaries and digital tools

The synergy between human intermediaries and technology provides a pathway for scaling digital solutions. Rather than side-lining middlemen, harnessing their established relationships, digital expertise, social networks, and data collection capabilities may unlock new possibilities. Undeniably, implementing sound technology design via the integration of feedback mechanisms, user-centred design principles, and participatory design approaches is necessary to mitigate the possible risk of intermediaries exploiting farmers and distorting market signals. In the future, it will be interesting to see how conversational artificial intelligence (AI) and the integration of chatbots based on language-based models such as ChatGPT could transform digital advisory services for smallholder farmers in developing countries. Pioneer apps like FarmChat, which combines AI and local farming experts, already provide farmers with advisory services through unlimited AI chats and personalized one-on-one sessions, supporting informed decision-making.

The complexities of smallholder agriculture require a harmonious blend of human insight and digital efficiency. Intermediaries need to act as entities that bridge the gap between technology and the farming community. Hence, digital agricultural solution providers need an explicit strategy for working with intermediaries to reach farmers and scale their services. A prerequisite for new market participants should be that the value proposition and business model for intermediaries are clarified from the outset. For existing solution providers, a strategy involves identifying their unique scaling challenges and determining whether intermediaries' skills, such as their well-established relationships with farmers or data collection capabilities as well as their social network can help meet these challenges. Finally, establishing a local cooperation network of field agents, agricultural input sellers, young people and leaders of farmers' organisations is key to unlocking the full potential and reach of digital agricultural services.