Pillar 1
Digital innovations
Gaps (factors limiting innovation and scalability in digital agriculture)
- Lower usage and adoption of digital solutions among women.
- Low mobile penetration in rural areas.
- Significant number of solutions are still reliant on broadband connectivity to deliver their value propositions. As with the solutions in African Commonwealth Countries, many digital agriculture solutions are built with mobile applications, sensors and websites as their primary delivery mediums. This means that many of the current digital agriculture solutions are inaccessible without mobile broadband connections.
A. Use support measures to increase usage of digital solutions
A.1 Reduce the import tariffs on mobile devices and tax rates on mobile broadband connections
Consumption of digital agriculture solutions in the region is primarily through the use of handheld devices. Governments should thus ensure that the consumption of digital agriculture solutions is not prohibited by high import tariffs on mobile devices as well as taxes that tend to increase the cost of the internet
B. Formulate strategies that enable all people to participate and excel in the digital economy
B.1 Leverage the power of societal “gatekeepers”
Adoption of digital solutions by women is partly dependent on their male counterparts. Many countries in the region face similar challenges in dealing with cultural and context-specific barriers to the use of digital solutions and the internet especially in rural South Asian communities. To facilitate greater exposure to (and hence understanding of) mobile internet, digital solution developers should recognise the need to persuade societal “gatekeepers” (male counterparts) with information regarding ways internet access for women will benefit families and consider using these agents (important customer touchpoints) as an extension of women’s social circles.
B.2 Develop solutions that can tap USSD and IVR technology
Because South-Asian region is the home to the world's largest illiterate adult population, digital agriculture solution developers should also develop solutions with Interactive Voice Response and USSD service offerings to cater to the section of potential users that cannot use the conventional smartphone
B.3 Designing products for customers with low digital literacy
Digital agricultural solutions ought to be designed with a less digitally literate user in mind, to make the mobile internet less intimidating and the offered digital solutions more mobile-friendly
Pillar 2
Data infrastructure
Gaps in the data infrastructure required for digitalisation of agriculture to thrive
- Absence of state-run soil and weather data APIs. Except for Sri Lanka, none of the other states in the region have Government-provided weather Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to facilitate the use of state-provided weather data in private sector digital agriculture solutions.
- Absence of interoperability and robust linkages between land and person identifiers. While all the governments in the region have nationwide campaigns to distribute national identifiers, definitive links between land, person and livestock identifiers remain largely non-existent.
- Significant percentage of land under customary tenure. Despite deliberate formalisation attempts by the governments in the region, a large amount of the land held by farmers in the South Asian Commonwealth is still informally administered.
C. Boost investment in digital data infrastructure and their key enablers
C.1 Investing in regular decennial agricultural census activities
This would avail digital solution developers with a quantitative summary of the data-centric needs of the population
C.2 Package Government issued weather data as open APIs
Governments could package soil and weather data in form of open APIs1 such that solution developers can easily include these data in their solutions at no cost, rather than undertaking expensive processes to collect it on their own.
Creating and opening up APIs would reduce the cost of acquiring data for solution developers. This would trickle down into reduced cost for the end user
C.3 Inclusion of freely available high-quality data solutions in developed digital solutions
Large amounts of freely available data from entities such as the European Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) data project are existent and highly relevant. Governments could leverage these data and make it accessible to actors in the value chain through APIs
D. Develop national strategies for issuing identifiers and improve interoperability among frameworks
D.1 Issue of identifiers
India has had considerable success in rolling out its state identifier system. While this is not yet linked to farm level and land identifiers, it is a welcome first step in the right direction. Other Commonwealth countries in Asia could also enhance efforts to roll out unique person identifiers, which they can later link to farm level and land data sets, in order to foster the creation of relevant data-driven digital agricultural solutions
D.2 Improve interoperability among systems and frameworks
Where different identifiers have been issued, it is recommended that system linkages are made so that the systems can speak to each other. Person identifiers should be linked to land, crop and livestock identifiers to enable policy-makers to have a concrete basis to make data-driven decisions
Pillar 3
Business development services
Gaps (factors hindering the flow of financing to digital innovations in agriculture)
- There are many smallholders. Most of whom do not understand the case for digitalisation. Despite Government efforts, the South-Asian region still has the largest number (more than 100 million) of family and smallholder food producers in the world. These farmers, fishers and herders produce more than 80 per cent of the food consumed in the region. Smallholder farmers are usually subsistent producers, which reduces their incentive to consume digital agriculture solutions. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most smallholders lack digital literacy skills and earn low margins.
- Low state provided expenditure on Government research and development into smart farming. An increasing number of countries are experiencing a steady rise in agricultural R&D spending since 2000. But in South Asia, Government expenditure in agriculture has declined or has been very low in all countries except in India. In Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, agricultural growth has slackened during the same period. This means that the region is primarily reliant on digital research and development funding from the private sector.
E. Use farmer groups as a gateway for extending digital agriculture solutions to smallholders
E.1 Identify cooperatives and use them as a pathway for conducting capacity building of smallholders
E.2 Build a database of cooperatives that are active in various value chains. Through this database, necessary linkages can be made between cooperatives and providers of digital agriculture solutions
E.3 Subsidise the cost of development for digital agriculture solution providers that are willing to extend products through cooperatives
E.4 Opening data Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to digital agriculture solution providers that are willing to extend products through cooperatives
The Base
Enabling environment
Gaps in Asia's enabling environment for digitalisation
- Limited knowledge on the use of mobile broadband – The GSMA estimates that more than 40 per cent of Indian adults were not aware of mobile internet, compared to over 30 per cent in Pakistan and Bangladesh by 2019. This leaves a significant number of potential digital agriculture solution consumers excluded from the consumption pool.1
- Significantly high level of illiteracy and digital illiteracy – UNESCO estimates that South Asia alone is home to almost half of the global illiterate population (49 per cent). This means a large proportion of the people can understand and utilise digital agriculture solutions.2
- Prohibitive fiscal environment – Some Asian Governments apply a number of different and often special taxes to the mobile network providers over and above the general taxation applied to other sectors of the economy, despite the positive externalities of mobile goods and services. This has a consequence of making the cost of broadband connections prohibitively high.
F. Securing digital inclusiveness
F.1 Engaging with actors in the ecosystem to incorporate deliberate inclusive initiatives in their design
In addition to traditional literacy, digital literacy (the skills to use computers and phones to effectively consume a service) also influences the adoption and use of digital agricultural solutions by smallholder farmers.
Governments can influence adoption of digital agricultural solutions by crafting innovative programmes to facilitate smallholder farmer adoption of technology. This could be through the provision of subsidies to providers that add user guides in their communication messages, offer translation and provide customer care support to users that are unable to use a phone by themselves Governments can also form strategic partnerships with private sector actors to facilitate training of its residents in schools and learning institutions as the first step in the creation of digitally literate consumers
F.2 Formulating standards to guide use and implementation of digital technologies and advanced technologies (e.g. Blockchain, satellite imaging, AI and 5G).
F.3 Provide targeted subsidies to facilitate digital solution adoption.
Government support would reduce the need for digital solution developers to get the smallholder farmers to pay for digital agriculture solutions right from the time they begin to use them
Commonwealth Asia
Conclusions
In conclusion, the most undeveloped element of the D4Ag in this region is the ‘base’ of an enabling environment pillar in the region is the enabling environment. The South Asian region has made notable progress in accelerating deployments of 4G.1 In 2020, GSMA estimates that most of the expansion in 4G coverage in the world was in Asia.
However, despite the significant broadband coverage milestones made in the region, several aspects of the enabling environments, specifically, the readiness of the consumers to make use of available digital agriculture solutions remain largely underdeveloped. Lack of awareness is a key barrier to the adoption of mobile internet and the consumption of digital agriculture solutions. Additionally, GSMA estimates that more than 40 per cent of Indian adults were not aware of mobile internet as compared to over 30 per cent in Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2019. For those that are aware of mobile internet, illiteracy and insufficient digital skills persist as the main barrier for more than a third of mobile users in South Asian countries.
The following are necessary for the recommendations to yield results.
Strong implementation. That is, policies need to be backed by clear strategic and implementation plans.
For the policy recommendations and state authored policy tools to have an impact, there is a need for strategic plans that stipulate specific strategic objectives and well-defined activities whose execution would lead to the realisation of the desired impact. In addition, the design of implementation plans should take a multi-stakeholder approach that encourages the involvement of not just the policy-makers, but also regional governments, civil society organisations and most importantly smallholder farmers.
Capacity building at a policy level is required.
Investing in growing the awareness of mobile internet and its benefits, alongside promoting digital knowledge and skills is important to improve access to and adoption of the mobile internet. Mainstreaming digital skills into school curricula or using agent networks to provide training are both ways to improve awareness and skills. Digital skills programmes should aim to strengthen confidence in digital technologies, educate about potential online harms and use locally relevant content that considers the various unique aspects of the end user’s operating domain.
Having an empowered pool of policy and regulation actors would equally have trickle-down effects on policies that are passed.
Footnotes
1 Wyrzykowski, R. (2020). Mobile connectivity in South Asia: Huge improvements in mobile broadband coverage bring 640 million online in last five years. https://www.gsma.com/mobilefordevelopment/region/south-asia/mobile-connectivity-in-south-asia-huge-improvements-in-mobile-broadband-coverage-bring-640-million-online-in-last-five-years/#_edn5