Resource

Is there a world where digital agriculture advisory services can scale without agents?

The Digitalisation for Agriculture or D4Ag dGroup and Grameen Foundation co-facilitated an eConversation to address the challenge that few digital advisory services (DAS) scale without support from community-based agents (CBAs) to sensitize and support farmers’ access to or use of DAS. The dialogue revealed a near-universal agreement that CBAs —including extension officers, farmer champions, and rural promoters—are critical for scaling DAS--and likely any digital tool. Barriers like limited smartphone ownership and capabilities, digital illiteracy, poor infrastructure, and lack of contextual content were repeatedly noted as reasons why CBAs are still necessary when introducing and using digital tools. For the foreseeable future, it’s unlikely DAS or any technology can scale without including the function of the CBA to some extent.