Author: Team Digital Agri Hub

Publish date: 23 April 2026

The idea of digitalisation for the agriculture ecosystem has emerged gradually, not as a single innovation, but as the result of decades of technological, institutional, and organisational change in agriculture. What began as the mechanisation of farming has evolved into a complex, interconnected system in which data, technologies, and actors continuously interact across the entire agri-food value chain. In its earliest phase, digitalisation in agriculture was, on the one hand, occurring at a territorial, aggregate level, with the use above all of satellite information for monitoring, early warning and forecasting purposes. On the other hand, it has been closely tied to efficiency gains at the farm level through mechanisation, irrigation systems, and later GPS-enabled machinery. This has evolved into precision agriculture, where sensors, satellites, and geospatial tools enable more targeted and data-informed decision-making. Yet these innovations largely remained confined to individual farms or specific technologies.

The real transformation began when agriculture started to be understood as part of a broader digital ecosystem. In this perspective, digitalisation is no longer about isolated tools, but about integrating technologies, data flows, and stakeholders into a dynamic, interconnected system. Today, the “digital agriculture ecosystem” refers to a socio-technical network in which farmers, agribusinesses, governments, researchers, and technology providers are - at least in principle - connected through digital infrastructures and platforms. Data becomes the central resource, continuously generated, shared, and analysed to inform decisions across multiple levels of the system.

Within this evolving landscape, international organisations such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), the World Bank (WB) and the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA) have played a foundational role in shaping both the narrative and the practice of digital agriculture. They have emphasised its potential to address global challenges such as food security, climate change, rural poverty and inclusion. Similarly, the OECD has contributed to defining the policy and governance dimensions of digital ecosystems, particularly around data sharing, interoperability and sovereignty.

Governments and regional institutions, including the European Commission, have further driven this transformation by investing in digital infrastructure, enabling regulatory frameworks, and embedding digitalisation into agricultural and rural development strategies. At the same time, the private sector, ranging from agritech startups to large multinational companies, has developed platforms, advisory services, and digital marketplaces that increasingly structure how agricultural value chains operate.

However, the ecosystem perspective becomes especially critical when considering low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In these contexts, agriculture is often dominated by Small-Scale Producers (SSPs), and the conditions for digitalisation differ significantly from those in high-income countries. Challenges such as limited connectivity, lower levels of digital literacy, fragmented markets, and constrained access to finance shape how digital ecosystems can emerge and function.

Rather than replicating models from more industrialised settings, digitalisation in LMICs has followed more leapfrogging and hybrid pathways. Digital solutions on mobile devices, for example, have played a transformative role, enabling farmers to access weather forecasts, market prices, financial services, and advisory support without the need for advanced infrastructure. In many cases, intermediaries, such as cooperatives, extension agents, or local service providers, act as crucial bridges between digital systems and farmers, ensuring that even those without direct access to technology can benefit.

In these environments, international development actors and donors have been particularly influential. Programmes supported by the World Bank and implemented in collaboration with governments and local partners have sought to build digital agriculture innovation ecosystems,  combining infrastructure investments, capacity building, and policy support. Other actors and initiatives also play a critical role in shaping the ecosystem. The Digital Impact Alliance, in partnership with FAO and ITU, fosters collaboration among public and private actors, facilitating knowledge sharing and the scaling of digital innovations, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Briter provides research and mapping of agritech startups and innovations, helping stakeholders understand trends and identify gaps. Mercy Corps Agrifin supports financial inclusion and digital solutions for smallholders, demonstrating how digital platforms can integrate financial and agricultural services. These actors complement national and global initiatives by linking innovation, financing, and collaboration.

Within this framework, National Agricultural Digitalisation Initiatives (NAgDI), spearheaded by the Commonwealth Secretariat, play a pivotal role. NAgDI address fragmentation by providing a shared national vision, aligning technology adoption with policies, rural development, and digital economy goals. They coordinate diverse actors, foster collaboration, encourage interoperability, and strengthen the enabling environment: digital infrastructure, governance, and capacity building. In LMICs, NAgDI are crucial for inclusion, ensuring smallholders, women, and remote communities can access digital solutions, often through intermediaries. They also facilitate the scaling of innovations, connecting pilots to national systems for sustainable impact. In this sense, NAgDI, where deployed, acts as an ecosystem orchestrator at the national level, ensuring that the different components of digitalisation—technologies, data systems, institutions, and actors - are aligned and mutually reinforcing. It is within these contexts that platforms such as the Digital Agri Hub  and the FAO Agrifood Systems Technologies and Innovations Outlook (ATIO) Knowledge Base (KB), now part of the broader FAO Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Portal,  become particularly relevant. The Digital Agri Hub – this year celebrating its fifth anniversary - exemplifies a shift from documenting isolated deployments of digital solutions to ecosystem-building approaches, especially in LMICs. The Hub, as a curated data repository, a knowledge base and data discovery facility, provides community and ecosystem support and advisory services in the domain of digitalisation for agriculture, with a special focus on small-scale producers in LMICs. The Hub reaches out to agriculture value chain actors and nurtures the digitalisation of the agriculture ecosystem via its D4Ag community of practice, an electronic knowledge network accounting for 2000+ members worldwide. By bringing together governments, private sector actors, researchers, and development partners, it facilitates the sharing of digital solutions and knowledge tools tailored to diverse local realities. Importantly, it showcases digital solutions that are not only technologically viable but also socially and economically inclusive.

The ATIO Knowledge Base is a comprehensive, open-access platform designed to support policymakers, investors, researchers, innovation users, and innovators in making informed decisions to accelerate the transformation of agrifood systems. Powered by AI and enriched through partnerships (Digital Agri Hub is a core partner on the digital solutions component), the ATIO KB bridges grassroots innovations with mainstream innovations.

The experience of LMICs also highlights critical challenges within digital agriculture ecosystems. Issues of data ownership, privacy, and governance are often less regulated, raising concerns about unequal power dynamics between global technology providers and local stakeholders. At the same time, the risk of exclusion - where smallholders, women, or remote communities are left behind - remains significant if digitalisation is not accompanied by deliberate inclusion strategies.

Despite these challenges, LMICs are also spaces of innovation and experimentation. Many successful digital agriculture models, particularly those based on mobile platforms, bundled services, and public-private partnerships, have originated or been refined in these geographies. This underscores an important point: digital agriculture ecosystems are not simply transferred from one context to another; they are co-evolved systems, shaped by local needs, capacities, and institutional environments.

Ultimately, the concept of digitalisation for the agricultural ecosystem implies that transformation in agriculture is not driven by technology alone. It emerges from the interaction between technologies, actors, institutions, and data systems, all embedded within specific socio-economic contexts. In low- and middle-income countries, this interaction is particularly complex, but also particularly important, as digitalisation holds the potential not only to increase productivity, but to enhance resilience, inclusion, and sustainable development.

In this sense, digital agriculture is best understood not as a fixed model, but as an ongoing, adaptive process, a continuously evolving ecosystem shaped by global agendas, local innovation, and the collective efforts of its many stakeholders.