Ethiopia has more than 50,000 trained government development agents deployed to provide improved agricultural advisory services. However, records show that one development agent is responsible for training 300 farmers on average, which makes the advisory services delivery difficult and tiresome.1 Digital Green, therefore, is working to combat such problems by digitizing agricultural extension service deliveries. One of the mechanisms being used to deliver customized improved agricultural advisory services to smallholder farmers is Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology. The DAAS project, led by Digital Green and implemented in partnership with other organizations, aims to strengthen the existing digital extension services through the deployment of use cases. The Dairy Use-case of the DAAS project is being implemented by Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD) and utilizes the Agricultural Transformation Institution’s 8028 IVR line to disseminate advisory information. The dairy component of the project focuses on the development and dissemination of advisory content in the areas of artificial insemination (AI), calf & cow management, ration formulation, and climate-smart diary. PAD partnered with 60 Decibels (60dB) in order to understand the uptake, effectiveness, and impact of advisory messages on dairy farming sent via the 8028 IVR call.
The study included interviews with 1,057 dairy farmers in Ethiopia who received advisory messages through the 8028 IVR calls, of which 59% were from the Amhara region. The samples were segmented between primary, secondary, and partial listeners based on their listening rate of the 5 advisory messages delivered through the IVR. Of the interviewed farmers, 41% reported that their quality of life has very much improved due to the IVR service they are getting, of which 28% mentioned that their dairy production has increased, and 19% said they have become able to afford household bills. Listeners valued convenience, ease of understanding, and usefulness of the information.
The dairy farming advisory information is impactful and leads to tangible improvements with close to 8 in 10 listeners reporting some improvement in their quality of life, their way of farming, and cattle management. Top changes included improved cattle care, feed preparation, and feeding. Female primary listeners were less likely to report the depth of impact: the proportion reporting very much improved. Listeners who were able to apply the IVR advisory in full experienced a better impact than partial listeners. The top reasons they did not fully listen to the call were because they were at work, poor network connectivity, and language barriers. Female partial listeners reported lower levels of satisfaction and a high challenge rate compared to complete listeners.
When it comes to gender-disaggregated findings, female listeners expressed lower understanding, application, and uptake of AI services. While all listeners reported advisory information to be useful, fewer female listeners-particularly female primary listeners- reported ease in understanding, application, and uptake of the information shared.
“Most of the time women don’t have a radio or anything else to learn from. 8028 helps us improve our knowledge and it is easy to use! I think many women can benefit from this because most of the time they are staying at home. This could be a good method of reaching these women.” – said one of the female secondary listeners, aged 45.
About 9 in 10 male farmers applied information, compared to only 7 in 10 female farmers. Similarly, close to 8 in 10 male farmers use AI services for crossbred cattle, compared to only 65% of female listeners. According to the study, levels of decision-making ability vary by sex and listener groups, and sharing information is also likely to be between members of the same sex in a community forum. Male listeners are more likely to share information through family gatherings than females, while female listeners are more likely to share the information in one-to-one conversations and village-level community groups compared to males.
The study recommended that there is an opportunity to increase the reach of women farmers and curate messages to improve female involvement through innovative ways of reaching women with messaging, including encouraging speakerphone use to listen with spouses and family members, and ensuring women are sent messages after 5 PM, given that 9 in 10 of them requested this. Similarly, the study recommends trying another way of reaching partial listeners like making callbacks at a more appropriate time that picks up from where the listener left off could increase retention and application.
The study also indicated that the project could consider providing messaging around joint decision-making to increase female levels of decision-making ability in the household. The IVR messages should reinforce the need for more equitable distribution of dairy activities within households. Besides female reach, the study recommends additional assistance to deepen the impact of the IVR messaging including encouraging and incentivizing women to share messages with other women in their households and community to increase the impact on farmers not just by interacting with them directly, but also through their family members. Improving women farmers’ access to financial products could increase the adoption of AI to get crossbred cattle and in turn, potentially increase IVR’s effectiveness is also recommended by the study.
Digital Agricultural Advisory Services (DAAS) project is a five-year project aimed at strengthening digital extension channels in Ethiopia. DAAS, implemented in partnership between Digital Green and Precision Agriculture for Development, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and the government of Ethiopia uses digital channels to provide advisory support to smallholder farmers through various digital means.
mily. In a refresher and planning meeting at Tantnagar block of West Singhbhum district with all the block officials, cadres, and farmers, she happily shared her experience and said that: “I have learned from the video advisory on potato crop and tried it on a small scale to see the difference from traditional farming and I am surprised to see that my potato crop is healthy and grows very fast, where in just a week time the growth is parallel to one-month crop with traditional farming. The yield is also higher which I can compare to the production cost. On my main crop field, I have not treated the seeds and used chemical fertilizers and pesticides for better growth and yield but in my small 
Similarly, a woman frontline worker named Gudiya, from Chitarpur block in Ramgarh district, who is the Aajeevika Krishak Sakhi (AKS) in Murubanda village is sharing knowledge on agricultural activities with farmers through videos. She spoke in a cadres meeting that this new digital technology has made her work easier. More farmers are now understanding, believing in the video advisories, and adopting them, which before was difficult by giving verbal training at community meetings, and also there was the extra effort of needing to explain all the advisories in practical terms. Now, farmers are also demanding other farming videos to be shown in the meeting as they found these videos interesting and relevant to their work. As a result, Gudiya is disseminating these videos in more community meetings and gatherings, and gaining respect among community members.
got 24 kg of black mustard seeds at a 100% subsidized rate under the National Food Security Mission and targeted for more yield than earlier, so after seeds distribution to farmers; the block team and AKS of that village decided to do group farming in a patch of 5.5 acres of land as the plots of those farmers are nearby and chose to adopt the CSA video advisories for mustard farming. They found it easier to do all the farming-related activities on time and convenient to look after the crop properly. This group farming also gave confidence to farmers to bear the minimum loss and do their work effectively with the help of each other, see the difference from traditional farming methods, and the impact of these advisories on the ground. They did all the practices starting from a seed treatment with Beejamrit, land preparation, line sowing, weeding, disease, and pest management using natural fertilizers and pesticides, and timely irrigation from Jeevamrit until harvesting, as had been shown in the video. 
Farmers from Balumath block in Latehar district shared that they are now easily adopting NPM practices with the help of video advisories disseminated in their community meetings and facilitated effectively by AKSs. As the NPM practices have been promoted for years by the government, AKSs used to share the knowledge with farmers in their respective villages but every time a farmer decided to adopt this, AKSs had to prepare those organic manures and pesticides for them to understand the full method. But after the video advisories were implemented, most of the farmers adopted these NPM practices just after watching the videos and when additional support is needed in preparing these, they just watch the videos again on their smartphones and do it. Only those farmers who don’t have access to smartphones are seeking help from AKSs and other neighbour farmers who have adopted this earlier. 
video-based crop advisories in her village-level community meetings. She shared that after using these digital tools for video advisories the adoption has increased among farmers: “As the advisory is localized and time specific, farmers found it authentic and easy to understand and this has built a self-confidence in me to do my work more efficiently.” Where before she was approaching farmers individually to give crop advisory and adoption by them, and now farmers are calling her to visit their crop fields and see the benefits of adoption. 
Rural community members and farmers from 3 different districts in Jharkhand (West Singhbhum, Gumla, and Simdega) have been trained in video production modules and become Video Resource Persons (VRPs) who are producing community videos on improved agricultural practices. These VRP team members also shared that they are happy and excited to produce videos, which would further be used in community training. They are proud that they would be contributing to the knowledge transfer of best practices to the farmers for better yield and income, which they will be documenting. This new work is encouraging and exciting for them, where they could not even come out of their home for work, now they are traveling to different villages for shooting, meet with new people and even convincing them to provide their time and work as actors in the videos. They are now confident about continuing with their work and producing videos on Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) and Sustainable Agriculture (SA) practices.
Emuye Muche, a 40 years old resident of Korata Kebele in Ethiopia is a mother of five children whose livelihood depends on the agricultural products she gets from her one acre of land, one cow, and five hens. Emuye started attending video dissemination sessions back in 2021 when the Development Agent set the session for the development group she is a part of at her house. Since then, Emuye has attended video dissemination sessions on poultry production, vermicomposting, maize side dressing, maize sowing, compost, urea molasses block preparation, PICS bag, nutrition, and vegetable production. She said: “what changed my life is the vermicompost preparation training, which was my first practice in video extension. I was surprised with the produced compost displayed in the video, which had a very attractive dark brown color like roasted coffee powder, my favorite powder. I learned from the video that it can replace Urea fertilizer, which is useful for vegetable and other crop productions. I learned that the production bed was prepared with local material at a shadowy place to prevent direct sunlight and predator birds from eating the worms. I also understood that all the materials for this compost preparation are not from outside of our area but are locally available materials.” home.”
activity. The first thing we did was collect cow dung from the field. Then, I prepared the composting bed in my backyard and brought the worms to start and manage them. I remember that the initial numbers of worms that I used were 22 in number but thanks to God, I currently have thousands, and recently, I distributed them to 12 farmers who are willing to adopt the practice.” 
During a field visit to Jharkhand, we were able to interact with two producer groups in Namkum and Latehar, that were previously women’s self-help groups, and get a glimpse into their journey to where they are now. More than individual women farmers becoming champions of change within these respective communities, what was evident was the power of collective agency. These producer groups have become a pillar of support whenever these women need support with input mobilization, capacity building, knowledge sharing, and product aggregation etc. Coming together, these women farmers recognize that working collectively is helping them enhance their leadership skills and realize the economies of scale. 
Participatory videos have played a significant role in empowering women farmers with knowledge, and building their confidence and ownership in being a part of producer groups. A frontline worker (FLW) reflected, 
The enterprising vision was especially evident in our interaction with the producer group that we met in Latehar, Jharkhand. This is a producer group that was formed in 2016, and they have been trained and mobilized on this front. When asked about how they bifurcate and sell their produce, they had a clear response – 
After a warm welcome, the team was introduced to 4 Farmer Producer Organizations, namely – Akulaganapavaram HFPCL, Bellamkonda HFPCL, Palanadu HFPCL, and Sri Lakshmi Chowdeswari HFPCL. One of the most apparent observations to the team was the gender disparity in these FPOs – among the several FPOs present, there was just one woman board member.
The digital extension team visited the Ganapavaram and Aakulaganapavaram farmer producer organizations (FPOs) in Naagireddypalem village, an hour away from Guntur city. Farmers and extension agents gathered to share their experiences on how advisories received through video extension and chatbots have changed their outlook on their natural farming practices and have helped them to lead healthier lives.
“We only need to share our location to get 3-minute videos that are specific to our crops at any given point of time,” one farmer shared. During the pandemic, farmers’ digital connectivity increased as they also made a Facebook page for themselves that now consists of around 20,000 farmers in the area. There is quite a need for market-based information, particularly about prices and buyers, one challenge that they are still facing is the lack of price regulation for produce that is grown using natural farming practices. As these farmers are all well connected with access to smartphones, the Facebook group that they have created for themselves has been used to connect directly with consumers to obtain better prices for their produce. This provides the opportunity to build on our current solutions to add market and price-based information in the hands of farmers to help them with data-backed decision-making.
ng to advance the livelihoods, resilience and self-determination in the Adivasi tribe communities, and foster the recovery from the economic effects of COVID-19 by strengthening women farmer producer organisations and their bargaining power.
Sabita Devi