Skip to main content
Feed the Future
This project is part of the U.S. Government's global hunger and food security initiative.
  • About
subscribe

Agrilinks

Search Log In

Main Menu

  • Topics
  • Events
  • Activities
  • Tools & Training
  • Members
  • About
subscribe

What’s the State of the Evidence for Digital Agriculture?

Jonathan Mockshell

Dec 26, 2019
Photo Credit: O. Bonilla-Findji / CCAFS

This post is written by Jonathan Mockshell and Brian King.

 

 

Digital innovations are cropping up across agricultural sectors, from extension services to trade, marketing to consumption. Precision agriculture technologies have helped industrial farms optimize resource use for decades, and today even on small farms there’s an app that enables smallholders to book tractors to reduce the financial burden of equipment, and interactive voice response systems that send agro-climatic information to help farmers increase crop yields and income. The growing number and diffusion of these digital innovations stand to help us build more resilient, adaptive, sustainable global food systems, improve welfare, and promote economic development.

There is, however, a perennial evidence gap in digital agriculture. This is to be expected with any class of emerging technology, but it is important to monitor how--and how much--these innovations are transforming our world if we wish to use them to their full potential. 

This is not to imply there is *no* evidence. Indeed, a literature review by our team found several cases that meet the “gold standard” of evidence. We found several randomized control trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental designs, machine learning techniques, and narratives of change evaluation that have demonstrated solid evidence in support of digital interventions:

  • A study on a picture-based insurance project indicates that streams of pictures of individual smallholder fields, taken using inexpensive smartphones, can support crop modeling, extension and insurance schemes (Hufkens et al, 2019). In turn, these outcomes can increase resilience to production risk and enhance food security in smallholder agricultural systems.

  • A second study developed a picture-based smartphone app called Time-Tracker that allows data recording in real time to avoid recall biases. The study compared data recorded with the Time-Tracker app to data collected with 24-hours recall questions. The evidence highlights recall biases, suggesting that using the app leads to valid results. 

  • Another study on the impact of mobile phone technology on agricultural extension services in India indicates that digital technology has improved the quality and speed of service delivery. Farmers in the study demonstrated greater knowledge and awareness of new agricultural practices, farmers’ aspiration to try new technology in the future, and access to credit.

These are great studies, but we also need to be sure we are not overly selective about evidence amid the inherent complexity of food systems. For example, another study using RCT highlights the need to use a nuanced lens to examine each intervention. The study shows that while households in Nigerian villages with increased access to mobile phone technology planted a more diverse basket of crops (especially marginal cash crops grown by women), this did not increase the likelihood of selling these crops or the farm-gate price received (Aker & Ksoll, 2015). Results like these suggest that cohesive interventions that address challenges at various points along the food system continuum are needed to improve farmers’ welfare, and that digital technologies can only be one piece of the puzzle.

At the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, we are of the view that systematic evidence collection and review needs to happen across the array of food system entry points. The food system framework is important for being able to examine interventions in light of consumption and nutrition, but also provides a way to begin to better define digital intervention types and build more commonality among study designs. With more standard data, definitions and approaches, we will be able to begin to measure and understand the full complexity that must be managed by farmers, industry, funding partners, and policymakers seeking to drive transformative change.  

In September 2019 we launched the Digital Food Systems Evidence Clearing House to begin to fill this gap. Featured interventions, which are reviewed by the BIG DATA Platform’s community of experts, must provide a description of their services, the estimated number of active users, and credible evidence of impact broken down into economic, environmental, social, technical components, as well as the overall impact on food systems efficiency.  

As we call for more evidence and populate the database, we will allow users to see global trends in the digital innovation and, once sufficient impact evidence is collected, the Clearing House will be used to periodically generate synthesis reports and meta-analyses of the ‘state of the evidence for digital food systems’.

As researchers, development experts, start-ups, policymakers and funders it’s in our hands to improve the state of evidence of digital intervention in the food system to guide program designs and scale out mature innovations. 

Information on how to submit your intervention and evidence to the Digital Food Systems Evidence Clearing House can be found here.

Filed Under: Agricultural Productivity Education and Extension Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

Comments

You May Also Like

post

Policy Imperatives for Digitalized Agricultural Extension

At Envisioning the Future of Extensions, some 30 participants from some 15 countries braved the risks of contemporary international travel to bring diverse experiences together to inform what can and...

Jock Anderson

Mar 11, 2020
post

September is Extension Month on Agrilinks!

In September, join Agrilinks and partners Digital Green, IFPRI, and the Feed the Future Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) project in sharing resources and thought leadership on extension and how...

Agrilinks Team

Aug 21, 2019
post

Bridging Ghana's Digital Divide

Read how Ghana is demonstrating significant progress in agricultural growth and access to digital technology.

Nikki Brand

Dec 28, 2017
post

Policy, Regulation, and Digital Agriculture in Africa

The entrepreneurial spirit in Africa’s emerging digital agriculture ecosystem is cause for excitement and optimism. But when asked what governments can do to accelerate digital agriculture, our initial excitement often...

David Spielman

Dec 04, 2019
Follow Agrilinks:
  • Youtube
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • RSS
Agrilinks
Achieving agriculture-led food security through knowledge sharing
MarketLinks
Market-based solutions for development
LearningLab
A collaborative learning community of development professionals
Landlinks
USAID's knowledge sharing platform focused on land tenure and property rights
Climatelinks
A global knowledge portal for climate change & development practitioners
Urbanlinks
USAID’s sharing platform for resources on sustainable urban development
Resiliencelinks
A global knowledge platform for resilience practitioners
Globalwaters
Sharing knowledge and ideas to solve global water and sanitation challenges
U.S. Agency for International Development
  • Accessibility
  • Contact
  • Help
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use
The information provided on this website is not official U.S. government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government.

Search Agrilinks

My Account

  • My drafts and published content
  • My profile
Sign out

Contribute To Agrilinks

  • Add a post
  • Add an event
Need help?

Subscribe

Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter featuring the latest and greatest Agrilinks content.

You'll also receive invitations to upcoming Agrilinks webinars and other special announcements. We won't share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any time.