Evaluating digital’s impact on the lives of farmers
How is the proliferation of digital technology and data analytics in agriculture contributing to the lives of farmers and agricultural service providers?
Learn about interventions and services for farmers
Use our tools to explore empirical evidence
Evaluate the state of the evidence in our evidence gap map
Check out our findings
and read the full report
Watch the report launches
WHY
Digital technologies and data analytics have transformed all sectors of industry and society, but how they are changing agriculture can be better understood. In particular, what impact do they—and can they—have on the 570 million family-run farms around the world.
The interest surrounding digital services for farmers is accompanied by uncertainty. Evidence is growing fast but across many sources and platforms, representing a significant challenge to create an overall synthesis
INTERVENTIONS
Digitalization offers an opportunity to leapfrog transformation of agriculture. Across the world, technology is rapidly changing the way food is produced, transformed, and distributed.
At the same time, most farms around the world are small or mid-sized. The remoteness and small scale of many farms, the fact that they consist of a few plots and livestock, creates a technological obstacle. For logistical and economic reasons, these farms will not be equipped with remote sensors to monitor plant growth or storage to keep crops dry and fresh until they can be sold. As a result, this is prohibitively expensive.
But successful interventions are out there to support producers. This review will assess, based on the available evidence, was is working and what is not, and importantly, what is missing from the landscape that, if present, would have greater impact.
IMPACT
Agriculture in the Digital Age is a research to evidence program. We are undertaking a global and comprehensive synthesis of the evidence using formal review methods and expert interviews on emerging issues.
Mapping where the evidence is and is not available is key to better understanding how and why some services work and other do not; importantly, at the same time, we need to assess how, and for whom, digital technology falls short of meeting its transformative potential.
We will map the range of outcomes, interventions and indicators on an interactive and online database. In doing this, it will serve as a unique, comprehensive, and reliable resource for funder and expert decision-making.
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