Digital Green

Digital Green is working to reduce deforestation, forest degradation and biodiversity loss, while improving the livelihoods of forest-dependent community members, particularly women and youth. In partnership with government service providers and Environment and Coffee Forest Forum, we have integrated use of our community video and participatory forest management approaches to: reconstitute 124 community Forest Management Associations and build their capacity to plan and manage forest restoration and management plans; promote use of sustainable agriculture and conservation practices among small-scale producers; and foster uptake of new livelihood options by establishing and supporting development of women’s self-help groups, youth-led enterprises, beekeeper associations and coffee producer groups. Recently renewed with a second round of funding for three additional years, this project is delivering cost-effective services to 50,000 farmers (over 40% women) in Oromia.

Digital Green is testing and evaluating digital tools that deliver timely, relevant advisory messages to chili famers and connect them to buyers. Led by Digital Green in collaboration with the Departments of Horticulture in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, and private sector partners ITC, AgNext, and Kalgudi, the project uses Digital Green’s community video approach and chatbots to help 16,000 farmers improve their chili crops. AgNext, an agricultural technology service provider that uses AI-enabled image and spectral analysis, produces data that helps farmers meet buyers’ quality parameters and market requirements. The Kalgudi and e-Spice Bazaar e-commerce platforms connect buyers with farmers and farmer groups. Best-in-class GS1 blockchain traceability standards uniquely identify, accurately capture, and automatically share quality information about commodities sold through these platforms, strengthening buyers’ confidence in produce quality and increasing prices realized by farmers.

Digital Green is improving the resilience and livelihoods of small-scale farmers in Andhra Pradesh by: enabling efficient delivery of targeted, relevant, timely farm advisory recommendations; improving access to markets and market information; and developing and testing tools that help farmer producer organizations (FPOs) create value for their members. More than 23,000 chili & cashew farmers (30% of them women) have benefited from farm advisories tailored to their soil and weather conditions, which they receive via a combination of videos in group discussion settings, interactive voice response messages, and WhatsApp-based chatbots. Digital Green’s data-sharing protocol, FarmStack, integrates local weather and soil data with production advisories to provide accurate, actionable information that helps prevent crop diseases and improve crop quality. Seven FPOs representing 3,400 farmers are using our Kisan Diary Enterprise mobile app to secure lower purchase and higher sales prices.

Digital Green is advancing prosperity, resilience, and self-determination in India’s most disadvantaged socio-economic communities—scheduled tribes—and supporting recovery from the economic effects of COVID-19 by building the negotiation capacity of women farmer producer organizations (FPOs). Our proven digital community advisory approach gives women the information they need to prepare their harvests and forest products to meet market demands; it also equips FPO leaders with the skills they need to manage group dynamics, confidently navigate market opportunities, and negotiate with buyers. Kisan Diary Enterprise (KDE) is an intuitive smartphone application that enables efficient, transparent data sharing among group leaders and members. Combining use of KDE with leadership coaching, Digital Green is improving the groups’ organizational capacity and the value farmers receive from participating in these organizations.

A Digital Green-led consortium is working to: 1) Promote and accelerate adoption of production practices backed by strong scientific evidence for reducing yield-scaled emissions; 2) Deliver a Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) platform that establishes a rigorous standard for tracking farm practices and estimating their emissions via calibrated climate models; 3) Enable farmers to make credible claims about their GHG emission footprint by developing a regionally-specific GHG accounting methodology and standard to generate GHG emission estimates; and 4) Enable farmers to access, understand and grant consent for how their data is used –thereby helping farmers to realize tangible livelihood improvements, which will in turn accelerate and sustain adoption of climate smart practices. The project aims to reach 200,000 farmers with digital advisories, of which farmers adopt practices sufficient to result in a 10,000 MT reduction in carbon dioxide equivalent emissions.