Digital Green

Digital Green empowers smallholder farmers to lift themselves out of poverty by harnessing the collective power of technology and grassroots-level partnerships. We amplify existing informal networks of farmers, extension providers, and markets with digital tools that raise local voices to transform agricultural development from the bottom up.

Founded in India in 2008 as a spin-off from a Microsoft Research project that sought to investigate how technology can support small-scale agricultural systems, we develop scalable and cost-effective technologies that assist rural communities to access and share information. Digital Green’s extension outreach began with high-quality, low-cost videos, and has grown to include other ICTs.

In Ethiopia and India, we are building on our community video work to leverage technology to further increase farmers’ productivity and incomes. We have worked with extension partners to identify the priority agricultural practices that maximize farmers yields at lowest cost, and facilitated links with input and output markets. Now we are working to deliver more targeted information specific to local, changing conditions to help farmers respond to changing climate and consumer preferences and realize tangible and sustainable returns on their investments.

Digital Green bridges information gaps by developing innovative, appropriate, and cost-effective technologies that enable poor, rural people to access information with which to make informed decisions that improve their livelihoods and nutrition outcomes.

Our core approach is to partner with and train agricultural extension and health service providers to produce, disseminate, and monitor the impact of short, locally-relevant videos that share knowledge and prompt adoption of practices that improve agricultural production, livelihoods and nutrition. Our video-enabled approach is an adaptable, scalable, cost-effective solution to reach large numbers of rural community members. Partnering with existing agricultural and health extension providers allows us to tap into trusted networks operating in remote rural communities, enabling rapid scale-up. The approach has become a platform for collaboration between public, private and civil society actors to rapidly disseminate high-quality, consistent and relevant content in rural communities, share learning, and influence national programs at scale.

While video remains our core approach, we have grown to incorporate digital technologies such as interactive voice response (IVR) and SMS to deliver complementary or reinforcing messages. This channel integration is providing farmers and frontline agents with timely reminders and supplementary information that has increased adoption of promoted practices and fostered engagement, even among farmers who have not attended video screenings. In Ethiopia, we worked with the Agricultural Transformation Agency to develop a two-way Q&A forum, which has reduced travel for extension personnel and facilitated surveillance of pest and disease vectors.

In 2015, we saw that, while access to extension information was boosting production for the large numbers of farmers we were reaching with video, they needed better access to markets to translate those gains into more money in their pockets. We developed an initiative called Loop, a shared transport-to-market service backed by a mobile phone application that provides direct aggregation, transport and marketing services, near real-time market price information and digitized transaction records. Like an Uber Pool for produce, Loop matches farmers’ requests for collection of freshly harvested produce to nearby transporters based on carrying capacity. Transporters collect and deliver the harvests to wholesale markets, and farmers are paid via mobile money. Farmers participating in Loop earn on average 15% higher revenue than non-Loop farmers, and pay 45% less for transportation and other transaction costs. We are in the process of spinning off Loop as a social enterprise.

Over the last 10 years, Digital Green has facilitated production of more than 6,000 localized videos in 50 languages and dialects, which have been screened by 17,000 frontline workers to reach more than 2 million rural households (77% women) across 10 countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, primarily India and Ethiopia. More than 50% of viewers have adopted at least one practice (3 to 4 on average), representing 3.5 million total adoptions.

Preliminary results from an ongoing two year randomized control trial conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute in Ethiopia show that:
1) Digital Green’s video-enabled approach reaches 24% more farmers than the Ministry of Agriculture’s conventional approach and results in 35% higher uptake of promoted practices;
2) The inclusive approach increases women’s access to extension by 20-25%; and
3) Public extension agents who use the video-enabled approach make a greater effort to visit farms, inspect technology use, and provide follow-up advice to farmers compared to those employing the conventional extension approach.
A separate controlled evaluation found the approach to be 10 times more cost-effective than traditional extension services on a cost per adoption basis.

Key factors for success are videos’ highly localized content; human mediation to reinforce messages; and capacity building that strengthens service provision.
• Localized content is rigorously vetted for technical accuracy and relevance by subject matter specialists and research institutions. We take a facilitative role to tap into local knowledge and ensure that messages are informed by an understanding of the farmers, local growing conditions, and obstacles to improving production.
• Tapping into strong, informal social networks in rural communities supports the flow of accurate, timely information. We have trained more than 17,000 frontline workers from public, private, and civil society organizations who add a person-to-person complement to the technology tools.
• A robust data management system customized for low resource settings allows Digital Green to continually collect and analyze feedback and data related to message content and dissemination, and adoption of promoted practices. Timely data and feedback inform development of targeted messages that address local circumstances and extension service follow-up needs.

More than a message delivery vehicle, our approach has organized timely exchange of locally relevant knowledge. Sharing peer-to-peer videos among farmer groups and women-led self-help groups has strengthened the social structures themselves. Integration of data and feedback has given farmers a voice, increased their production and incomes, and helped national extension systems better respond to community needs. Our participation in multiple research studies helps to provide evidence that supports investments in policies and programs that improve livelihoods and nutrition for smallholder farmers.

Integration of data and farmer feedback has given farmers a voice, increased their production and incomes, and helped national extension systems better respond to community needs. By prioritizing promotion of agricultural practices that provide the highest return on investment, we have increased farmers’ yields by 22% and incomes by 16%.

Our video approach is backed by a body of evidence on its effectiveness and cost-effectiveness:
● Preliminary results from a recent randomized control trial (RCT) conducted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Ethiopia show that: 1) the video-enabled approach reaches 30% more farmers than the public extension system’s conventional approach and results in up to 35% higher uptake of promoted practices; 2) extension agents who use video make a greater effort to visit farms, inspect technology use, and provide follow-up advice than those who do not; and 3) the inclusive approach increases women’s access to extension by up to 25%.
● An RCT conducted by Innovations for Poverty Action and Jameel Poverty Action Lab in Bihar, India, demonstrated a 50% gain in adoption rates and 21% increase in paddy production compared to the Bihar Rural Livelihoods Promotion Society’s traditional group-based approach.
● An assessment commissioned by Odisha Department of Agriculture found that 98% of farmers who attended traditional trainings and video screenings found video more efficient. Farmers reported increased profits from yield increases and reduced cultivation costs.
● Evaluations of Loop, our farm to market service, has shown that Loop farmers on average have 15% higher revenue than non-Loop farmers and pay 45% less for transportation and other transaction costs.