Digital agriculture solutions & use cases
The assessed solutions were found to be predominantly crop-based pre-harvest advisory solutions (78 per cent).
- The market linkage solutions were found to be 40 per cent of the assessed solutions.
- Only 19 per cent of the accessed solutions provided a service offering that included financial access and insurance. With less than 12 per cent of all formal private sector lending portfolios going to agriculture1 in the region, this statistic reveals a significant void in the agricultural financing solutions space.
- While most of the South-Asian region falls far beyond the recommended farmer-to-extension officer ratio,2 only 1 per cent of assessed solutions provided a means for farmers to access extension agents.
- Eighty-two per cent of the solutions had at most two service offerings, while the remaining 18 per cent had a bundled3 product offering.
Digital technologies deployed in Commonwealth Asia
The use of smart farming technologies in Commonwealth Asia, just like in Sub-Saharan Africa is not well documented. This section highlights some notable use cases of smart farming methods in Commonwealth Asia countries.
Digital technologies are being applied to solving several systemic constraints across Commonwealth Asia, from trade and supply chain constraints to climate change and women and youth inclusion.
Read more in the short snapshots below.
Optical sensors applied to reduce nitrogen inputs in northwest India
In India, the Agritech company Trimble’s GreenSeeker optical sensing system is being applied to help smallholder farmers to minimise the use of chemical inputs in their farming activities. The GreenSeeker is a solution that computes the normalised difference vegetation index (NVDI) value for individual plants and relays the appropriate information to a network of sensors that apply nitrogen-rich fertilisers according to individual plants.
Laser land levelling in southeast Pakistan and northwest India4
In India, the Governments of Gujarat and several other regions have subsidised the use of laser-based land levelling technology for smallholder farmers. The region that has been noted to use the technology comprises the states of Sindh and Punjab in Pakistan and Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujarat in India. These regions similarly tend to have the highest acceptance rate of smart farming technologies in Southern Asia. Geographically, they represent about 60 per cent of the arable land in Pakistan and 20 per cent in India.
Cereal crops are grown commercially and contribute a major portion of procured grain in both countries. The costs and benefits of laser land levelling are relatively even between the two countries aside from roughly 20 per cent higher agricultural input costs and 20 per cent lower labour costs in Pakistan.
Index-based insurance
As with African Commonwealth countries, South-Asian Commonwealth countries have larger concentrations of smallholder farming populations. Notable insurance schemes in the region have been run by partnerships between Governments and international bodies like the World Bank.
A key example is the Government of India's partnership with the World Bank on the National Agriculture Insurance Scheme. Under this partnership, more than 25 million farmers are insured as early as 2010.5 Despite a large number of insured farmers in the region, lengthy payment periods for claims have affected the effectiveness of agricultural insurance programmes.
Crop image diagnosis with the Plantix app
In India and Pakistan, mobile applications like the Plantix app are used for crop disease diagnosis on their mobile phones. Farmers take pictures of the affected crops and upload them using the app. The photographs are analysed using artificial intelligence algorithms, and results are returned immediately to the individual farmer. Critical information on symptoms, triggers, chemicals as well as biological treatments is provided.6
All pictures sent via the app are geo-tagged, thereby enabling real-time monitoring of pest and disease outbreaks. The resulting metadata provide valuable insights into the spatial distribution of cultivated crops and most significant plant diseases, e.g. in the form of high-resolution maps. Currently, the app has a plant image database of half a million pictures covering 30 crops worldwide and offers prescriptions for over 120 crop diseases.
Soil variability assessment
Precision Development, a global non-profit organisation that harnesses technology, data science, and research to empower people living in poverty and improve their lives, is supporting the Government of Punjab, Pakistan on a multi-year endeavour with the goal to make customised mobile-based advisory services to facilitate the effective use of soil health cards. The initial work revolves around complementing the planned distribution of soil health cards with mobile phone-based explanations and encouragement to use the prescribed fertiliser types and amounts. In addition, the firm also offers a more targeted digital solution that assesses soil field variability.
Case study: Krishok Bondhu Phone Seba
The Government of Bangladesh partnered with UNDP to develop, test and roll out the access to information (www.a2i.gov.bd), the flagship programme. Under the Digital Bangladesh initiative, they developed the Krishok Bondhu Phone Seba, 3331, a hotline that provides an IVR system which farmers can call to receive advisory information from their regional extension agents.
When a farmer, who is enlisted with the portal, calls 3331, the call is automatically carried to his/her respective block agriculture extension officer. If the extension officer is unable to pick the call up, the call automatically goes to the supervisor. If the call remains unanswered, the message from the farmer can be recorded and the farmer will receive the answer via SMS. Most IVR helplines for smallholder farmers are dependent on a central call centre, but with this helpline, farmers can reach their area’s block supervisor, thereby reducing the gap between the farmer and agriculture expert.7
Value proposition summary
- IVR solution for farmers without internet connections and smartphones.
- Cost-free advisory information from Government extension agents.
- Access to state verified information about agricultural inputs in the region.
- Access to information and insight from university plant researchers.
Product offerings
As with other countries in the region with large numbers of smallholder farmers, dissemination of effective extension services still remains a challenge for national and local governments in the country. In 2018, the government partnered with UNDP to develop a digital solution that would leverage mobile phones, and a web-based portal to bridge the extension gap for smallholder farmers in the region.
In addition, the digital solution is for the first-time enabling extension officers in the country to link national identifier data, farm-level yield data and land identifier data to facilitate the growth of government-provided data-centric digital agricultural solutions in the region. This model of state-led rollout of digital solutions in locations where there are a lot of smallholder farmers is important, especially in the context of other South Asian and African Commonwealth nations. When it is not cost-effective for private entities to build the data infrastructure to be used in digital agriculture solutions, or even for them to roll out digital solutions, government entities can do the initial roll-out and build the requisite data infrastructure in preparation for the future entry of private players in the digital agriculture space in the region.
Smallholder farmer impact
Through the access to Information (a2i-II) Programme, the Krishok Bondhu Phone Seba solution was developed and has gone on to support more than 22 million farming families, by providing them getting extension services from the Department of Agricultural Extension’s 14,000 extension workforce. The digital solution also links extension agents to crop researchers from various universities within Bangladesh. Unlike many digital solutions, this keeps the digital solution with relevant and up-to-date information via constant updates from university researchers.8
Footnotes
1 IObtained from author computations from FAOSTAT.
2 Blum, M. and J. Szonyi (2011). Investment requirements in extension to achieve zero hunger and adapt to climate change.
3 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Farming Systems and Poverty. http://www.fao.org/3/y1860e/y1860e07.htm
4 Whitehead, J. (2014). Developments in Precision Agriculture Use in Asia.
5 Mahul, O. and N. Verma (2010). Making Insurance Markets Work for Farmers in India. IFC Smart Lessons Brief. World Bank, Washington, DC. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/10469 License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO.
6 Plantix (2021). Joint Forces Against Highly Invasive Fall Army Worm Pest. https://plantix.net/en/blog/joint-forces-against-highly-invasive-fall-armyworm-pest
7 Digital Green (2018). ICT4AG Handbook A quick guide to ICT solutions for smallholder farmers.
8 Key informant interview with Md. Tanvir Quader (Senior Software Engineer a2i Programme – Bangladesh).