Digital Version 2.0 for poor farmers

Its all the rage isn’t it? Technical applications like mobile money, drones, blockchain, artificial intelligence, satellites, sensors and the key by-product of it all — big data analytics for precision agriculture. But where to start? How to think about digital agriculture? And how do we ensure the benefits of big data analytics also accrue to poor smallholder farmers? The development community looks through the lens of farming family empowerment and poverty reduction. I aspire to this same vision. The best of our human nature comes out when we strive to help others less fortunate. I also aspire to the vision of the efficient allocation of resources by the private sector. My first foray into the non-profit sector was meant to instill more private sector thinking into the design of our agriculture development projects globally. I recall with chagrin what was almost zero interest at that time for what eventually became a 180 degree shift in their culture. The sharp and cutting comments still sting when, back in 2005, my use of the word ‘profit’ immediately branded me an enemy in their non-profit, NGO camp. I feel some measure of satisfaction, though, that any agriculture development program today almost always considers the underlying economic viability of whatever supply chain actor that it is assisting. Now that we have the ‘development’ and ‘private sector’ aligned lets aspire to a vision of farmer empowerment and poverty reduction through scaled and efficient distribution of products and services delivered by the private sector and that serve the many market demands from the base of the economic pyramid (e.g. agriculture input supplies, PAYGo solar, cleancookstoves, digital savings and payments, etc.).

Since around 2008 entrepreneurs, agribusinesses, solution providers, the development community and farmers (most importantly) have launched into digital agriculture applications, designs and thinking. Ten years later we have collectively embraced and come to the end of digital agriculture version 1.0. Great Lakes Coffee is a rare agribusiness that is clearly seizing the first mover advantage while the broader sector inevitably continues to play ‘catch up’ to advancements in digital. We now need to map out digital agriculture version 2.0 as informed by the many worthwhile lessons learned and best practices from 1.0. But…… we need to step up our game as we enter the wild and crazy world of numerous technologies that were not even around in 2008 (e.g. IOT, satellites, drones, etc). Our pursuit of ad hoc, one-off digital agriculture solutions was less about strategic interoperability and more about the Silicon Valley mantra ‘move fast and break things.’ But as nicely highlighted by Angus Hervey in his article,

it would seem his mantra move slowly and don’t break things is more appropriate at this point. Today we face systemically grave issues such as data ownership, consumer protection, financial literacy and integration with regulatory frameworks. Going forward we must be carefully deliberate, thoughtful and analytical given the hyper-connectedness of society both now and more so in the future.

another important topic that requires our discussion. That discussion is about the immutability of blockchain which precludes any GDPR-compliant ‘right to be forgotten’ option of deleting data…. that gave me so much satisfaction. Whether for centralized or decentralized databases, how do we ensure farmer and farm data is protected and can be monetized by the farmer? This brings us back to the ‘move slowly and don’t break things’ approach so that we can carefully frame ecosystem parameters that maximize the potential for farmers to own, control and monetize some or even all of their data.

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