Author: admindigitalgreen

Farmers’ resilience in times of crisis

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Smallholder farmers contribute the most to our food systems, and yet they are amongst the most vulnerable groups in poverty. With COVID-19 posing a threat to their livelihoods, to bolster the resilience of smallholder farmers in Andhra Pradesh, Digital Green’s COVID-19 Resilience Support Program enabled efficient delivery of targeted, relevant and timely advisory recommendations, and worked on improving access to markets and market information.

The main interventions were with smallholder cashew and chilli farmers to enhance their productivity in terms of adopting best agricultural practices and increasing quality production. The dissemination of advisories for this would be done through channels like human-mediated group dissemination, Whatsapp, Chatbot and IVR, which was a hybrid communications approach which Digital Green has applied across its work in varying capacities. 

Another major intervention was to improve FPO’s ability to access competitive markets to raise farmer incomes by increasing their participation in FPO sales and with Digital Green’s Kisan Diary Enterprise (KDE), a mobile application, that would play a role in increasing FPO revenues.

This program set out to impact 75,000 smallholder farmers. Here are some remarkable stories of resilience from the field:

Resilient Spirit of Tribal Women Farmers | Vizianagaram district, Andhra Pradesh, India

At the time of sunset on beautiful hills in tribal areas of Vizianagaram district, more than 15 women farmers – each on their tiny farm fields plots, sizes up to .15 acres to .20 acre – are always found harvesting different vegetables in a happy mood. Some of them were watering the vegetable plantations. All their vegetable cultivation plots are adjacent to each other, adjoining their village Gotiwada of Kurupam revenue block of Vizianagaram district in Andhra Pradesh, India. All of them are small-holder tribal women farmers and they cultivate vegetables for household consumption purposes and sell surplus produce in the market in nearby Kurupam town. Every evening at Gotiwada village, these scenes of women farmers watering vegetable plants, weeding, harvesting, packing or walking in the vegetable fields and once-in-a-while friendly banter with neighboring farmers sum up shared values and intrinsic togetherness in tribal culture and community. 

In the subsequent lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic and market closures, like in many other parts of rural India, these tribal farmers too faced many challenges in accessing the essential daily food requirements that they buy and sell in local town markets. In an attempt to minimize the disruption caused in supply chain by Covid-19 pandemic, Digital Green with support from International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) & Walmart Foundation and together with field partner NGOs Jattu Trust in Vizianagaram district and Velugu Association in Srikakulam district conceptualized and implemented Covid-19 Resilience Support Program in tribal areas from September 2021 through February 2022. 

As part of this program, around 1800 tribal women and men farmers in both districts were supported in different ways – by providing native variety vegetable seed kits, fruit saplings, neem cake powder, cycle weeders and by paying shareholder membership fee for ultra-poor to join in Farmer Producer Organizations. Also, as a follow-up, they were provided with advisory support through our community video disseminations and interactive voice response (IVR) messages on how to grow vegetables and fruit in rain-fed or in drought-like conditions through natural farming dry sowing method which can ensure round year green cover.  

“The support we have received through this program is quite helpful especially the situation is quite difficult,” said Nimmaka Lalitha of Gotiwada village. Many of her fellow farmers echoed the same feeling and detailed the various kinds of benefits that they have received through the program. “Native varieties of vegetable seeds that have got pest and disease resistant,” said Nimmka Kavitha. “Vegetable cultivation through natural farming methods ensured us pesticide residue-free food,” said Nimmaka Mani. “Weeding used to take 10 days’ time in my tiny field. We have received a cycle weeder through this program. With the cycle weeder, I am able to remove the weed in just two days’ time. It is such a saving of my labor and time,” Pattika Naresh of Kondabaridi village. “By growing different vegetables around the year, nutrition diversity is ensured for our community members. Some of my fellow farmers are selling surplus produce and getting additional income,” said Nimmaka Dhalamma of Gotiwada village. 

The program benefits are not only limited to a few farmers in Gotiwada village. Several hundreds of poor tribal farmers in Vizianagaram district have received the complementary support from this program. Many of them have now become shareholders in local farmer producer organizations with program support. After seeing all these benefits, many of them opined that they will continue to grow vegetables in a natural farming method and share knowledge and seeds among their fellow farmers to grow their own food.  

Abundant Will of a Farmer Couple in a World of Scarcity | Srikakulam  district, Andhra Pradesh, India

Vooyaka Shanti and her husband Bhaskar Rao of Mohan Colony hamlet of Chinnabagga revenue village of Seethampet revenue block in Srikakulam district are an inspiring farmer couple. Shanti and Bhaskar Rao own a five-acre cashew orchard. Since cashew cultivation is a once-in-a-year income provider, they grow loads of vegetables on tiny pieces of land in extreme rain-fed conditions with many innovative agriculture methods and low-cost irrigation technologies for supplementary livelihood. They have three small vegetable growing plots – between .02 and .05 acres each, adjacent to their cashew orchard. 

In the first plot, Bhaskar Rao invented a technique to bring bund water, which is steep 50 feet below, to the field above to water vegetable plants through the use of battery-operated power sprayer at a cost of  two thousand rupees. In the second vegetable plot, Bhaskar Rao installed a tiny solar panel to generate electricity and connected it to a tiny water motor to take water from a small pond to their .03 acres tomato field. This cost him around two thousand rupees. In the third vegetable plot, he uses the force of gravity to bring water from a hill slope, which is half-a-kilometre away, with an underground pipeline. Making otherwise impossible plant irrigation possible is not the end of their inspiring story. It has a beautiful continuity. 

Bhaskar Rao and Shanti are one among hundreds of beneficiaries Covid-19 Resilience Support Program in Srikakulam district. Digital Green, with support from ICRISAT and Walmart Foundation conceptualized the Covid-19 Resilience Support Program and jointly implemented it with its NGO partner Velugu Association in Srikakulam district. “We have faced many difficulties during Covid-19 times,” said Bhaskar Rao. “Though we have been cultivating vegetables in the past also, there was some investment required especially for seeds and fertilizers,” Bhaskar Rao added. He further said that through Covid-19 Resilience Support Program, they have received different types of native vegetable seeds, cycle weeders and neem cake powder. “Earlier, we used to buy hybrid seeds which can’t be used as seeds the following season. Now we are going to preserve seeds from native variety vegetables for many next seasons to come,” Bhaskar Rao added.  “We have never cultivated these many types of vegetables. Our food at home is quite diverse now with many vegetables, Shanti said.   “Most importantly, we are not using any fertilizers to grow vegetables. We have learned natural farming methods through video dissemination sessions and by watching Digital Green videos on YouTube. We have also received weather information and farming practice details through IVRS*.  With less cost of cultivation in the natural farming method, we are harvesting safe and bountiful vegetables. After reaping sufficient produce for household consumption and sharing vegetables among our extended family, we have sold 1.5 quintal of tomato produce,” said very happy Bhaskar Rao and Shanti. 

They say where there is a will, there is a way. In Vooyaka Shanti and Bhaskar Rao’s story, it is like since they have a will, many things have come in their way. 

*IVRS = Interactive voice response system

Reaching more women farmers via empowering extension agents

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Addressing gender inequality in Ethiopia is essential to achieve sustainability in agriculture as women perform a large share of agricultural labor (40-60%), and high levels of inequality make it harder to increase productivity and reduce poverty. However, women face specific constraints that reduce their productivity and limit their contributions, one of which is a lack of agriculture extension service. Extension agents, including Subject Matter Specialists and Development Agents, receive training from Agricultural Technical Vocational Education and Training (ATVET) colleges but the training emphasizes technical subjects, with inadequate focus on gender issues. Moreover, extension agents are predominantly male and direct their advisory services to male farmers. Further, women face limited mobility in certain communities and geographies as well as cultural sensitivities about (male) extension agents providing advice to women farmers. Due to these factors, female farmers produce 23% less per hectare than their male counterparts – negatively impacting the efficiency, effectiveness, and overall economic progress of the country.

Digital Green recognizes that engaging institutions in change processes is critical to removing structural barriers that reinforce gender norms. We are committed to support government partners in implementing strategies that advance women’s access to agricultural extension services by acknowledging the power of incentives and informal systems that reinforce norms. Such initiatives transcend Digital Green’s project activities and have the capability to make the whole agriculture extension service more gender intentional. One of the mechanisms of supporting the government to reach more women farmers in accessing agriculture extension service is by enhancing extension agents’ knowledge on gender. We empower Development Agents to start challenging the different gender stereotypes while producing agricultural extension videos. By creating awareness among extension agents who closely work with Digital Green, and by casting women farmers in our videos, we are challenging such stereotypes for the better.

Digital Green has included gender content in video production and video dissemination training manuals to enhance extension agents’ knowledge on gender. Among the content included in the manual are: what do we mean by gender, how to take the issues of gender into consideration when producing and disseminating videos, how to facilitate video dissemination sessions in a gender-sensitive manner, and more. From the feedback we received from Development Agents, the inclusion of gender-sensitive training content has helped them to understand why gender is important in their daily work and even generated additional demand for gender-focused training.

 

 

 

A Hope for a Healthier Tomorrow in India

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Each Story Brings Change

Munnawar is a 42 year old ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist)  worker hailing from a Muslim family in Banera which is one of the Muslim dominant villages of Naarsan block, in Uttarakhand state in North India. She has four daughters and four sons, and her husband works as an agricultural laborer – they both work hard to ensure that their children obtain formal education which they were not able to as they did not have the means. Despite this, Munnawar has gone on to become one of the most well-known ASHA workers in her community, catering to more than 1400 families, because of how well she connects with mothers and their families. 

Prior to becoming an ASHA worker, she worked under a private doctor as a birth attendant, and assisted an ASHA worker in her village in carrying out scheduled health activities. By virtue of this engagement, she learned more about the role that an ASHA worker plays.

Noticing her work, in 2012, the village head Mr. Salim recommended Munawwar for the position of an ASHA worker in the village despite not being literate. Her limited exposure to formal education posed a barrier to being able to maintain records and reporting work, but her coworkers were supportive. In return, Munawwar assisted her coworkers by accompanying them for home visits especially for counseling families who were adamant on their traditional beliefs about mother and child care.

Over the years, Munawwar has gained the confidence to be able to support families within their communities and change their beliefs about ill-informed maternal and child health practices. She has worked diligently with families and has counseled mothers so that they can go for safer health and nutrition practices. By using digital methods that she learned about through Digital Green’s capacity building workshops on video production, training and dissemination, she has been able to share knowledge about institutional delivery, immunization, and modern family planning methods.

Even after all this time, she still ensures that she goes for daily home visits and that all necessary support is given to families at any point of time. Her level of care towards mothers has extended to the point where once a mother had a delivery complication, she even donated her blood to save her life. Her dedication has cemented her position as an influencer within her community. During the pandemic, she kept at it by sharing videos via Whatsapp, and continuing to support families for anything that they needed.

Frontline workers like Munnawar are the agents of change, and serve as the interface between health systems and structures, and community members to ensure their health and wellbeing. They have been integral to the overall success of Project Samvad. Similar to Munnawar’s story of perseverance and dedication, Project Samvad has been able to work with over 5,000 ASHA and Anganwadi workers across six states in India, to build their capacities on using digital approaches to share knowledge and connect with their respective communities. Resilient frontline workers at the grassroots level reflect all the more on the effectiveness of health system structures in being able to reach and impact communities in rural and remote areas. Project Samvad has significantly contributed to our learnings on gender and resilience.

What made Project Samvad so unique?

 Health is never just physical, it is also about growing up in a healthy household that allows a child to feel loved, secure, and physically healthy. In our society, more than anyone else, mothers are responsible for caring for the wellbeing of their children, and raising them in a healthy household, and so they must be educated and made aware of optimal health and nutrition practices. To build a truly equitable society, women must be allowed to have agency on how they plan out their families and futures.

When we say that information is power today, what we mean is not the bulk or abundance of information, but how the needed information reaches a person in the remotest area of a poor, developing, and yet a hopeful country that enables him or her to make an informed choice which has the power to transform lives.

Similarly, Project Samvad has not just been about sharing information through digital approaches, but how this method of sharing information, and the knowledge in itself can transform the communities that we have worked in for the past six years, and give them the hope for a better and healthier tomorrow. For example, by simply sharing an instructional video with targeted women in the community via Whatsapp, it is not just the availability of the content but the fact that at any given moment, it will only take a click of a button to access information that can change the quality of life of these women and children.

“We never let go of the hope, the heart, and the pulse of the community” is what Dr Sangita Patel, Health Director of USAID shared in the last dissemination workshop that was held by the Project Samvad team on 9th February. Community-centered approaches with the value-addition of digital technologies have always rung true for Digital Green across interventions in Health, Nutrition, Gender, and Agriculture. Collective learnings from Samvad continue to inform our approach towards community engagement, social-behavioral change communication, and hybrid digital approaches that have transformative potential.

Impact in Numbers

Project Samvad had a massive impact across six states in India, namely Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, and Assam. Looking back, the Project has reached over 700,000 women directly, and 360,000 women have been using digital channels.

During the project implementation period, the exposure of women to digital dissemination channels gradually increased from 32% in July 2018 to 96% by December 2018. From the first survey conducted in September 2018 to the latest one in January 2020, the percentage of women and men who knew at least three different modern family planning methods grew from 39.1% to 76.3%.

A Phone Survey that was conducted during Project Samvad found that 9 out of 10 respondents would watch videos that they received via Whatsapp during the pandemic.

What have we learned?

Project Samvad has generated a lot of interest and insights in its duration. Our key takeaways are that the proven community video approach complemented by other digital channels such as Whatsapp and IVRS has rapidly scaled up impact amongst local communities and can be applied to any context, sector, and geography. We have found that using technology builds an intrinsic strength at horizontal as well as vertical levels – not only do they facilitate dialogues and joint learning within the community, they also serve as an interface between health system structures and the women beneficiaries.

From the standpoint of influencing behavior change within people, local and contextualized information that they are familiar with, plus the delivery of information in a human-mediated, participatory approach establishes and strengthens the link between service providers and the community. This is of paramount importance to improve the uptake of any best practices shared whether it be in the health domain or even agriculture.

The data that we have gathered and the lessons that we have learned are important and will continue to enormously contribute to future opportunities in strengthening national and subnational policy actions on health, nutrition, and family planning.

Here are relevant links to Project Samvad Learnings:

For more resources on Project Samvad, please visit www.digitalgreen.org/resources-samvad

Watch the Samvad Playlist that dramatizes the human impact of Project Samvad here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-WsPllTgj_6kJRhe1ER-PfnZGZb81Fcu 

Reaching More Farmers through IVR

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Digital Green reached more than 18,600 farmers, including 1,957 female farmers, with various seasonal agricultural messages in five different languages through ATA’s 8028 in the past six months. The messages, transmitted starting from June, 2021; focuses on harvest and post-harvest, weeding & fertilizer application, pest & disease control, row planting, land preparation, seed selection for crops like wheat, tef, barley, maize, sorghum, and coffee. 

Digital Green is using technologies such as video and IVR to empower farmers by providing access to information on improved agricultural practices in partnership with other like minded organizations and institutions. This collaboration will reach out to a wider audience base and farmers who cannot be able to have the opportunity to attend the face to face video extension sessions. In this regard, Digital Green partners with the Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) and is utilizing the 8028 line, to ensure that smallholders have immediate access to relevant seasonal agricultural information, which will help them to make decisions aligned with their farming practices. Accordingly, Digital Green has managed to reach 18658 farmers, 3168 Development Agents (DAs) as well as 528 regional, zonal and woreda level heads with various messages in five languages. Besides using the 8028-line, Digital Green is partnering with ATA in various activities. As part of the partnership, Digital Green assigned Ecom Technologies to provide capacity building and skill transfer focusing on Application and user side of 8028. The 8028 Farmers’ Hotline is a system designed to provide agronomic best practices to smallholder farmers via mobile and landline phones. Starting its operation in 2014, the 8028 Farmer’s Hotline reached more than 5.5 million registered users to receive different agronomy, and Livestock based information in the country using 6 languages.

 

“ I have witnessed the social change the video extension has brought to farmers” a reflection from a Model Master Trainer

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In Ethiopia, Digital Green is training staff from the government agriculture office in video production and video dissemination. The training is delivered by Digital Green team. However, eight selected agricultural professionals in Amhara Region were trained as trainer-of-trainers (ToT) to make the training more sustainable and institutionalized with the government’s structures. These eight selected staff are also working as assistant master trainers during video dissemination training in their respective sites.   

Bogale Luel is one of these master trainers. He was born and raised in Gishe Rabel, North Shewa Zone. He is currently working as an Extension Communication Specialist at the North Shewa Zone Agriculture Office. In addition to his government work in this office, he is also responsible for overseeing the overall work in the districts where Digital Green operates and working as focal person. Bogale has received a full master trainer training at the regional level and he has been working as Digital Green’s  focal point since 2011. Bogale began attending dissemination and production training since he was an extension officer at the Bureau of Agriculture.

Tesfu Altaseb, Digital Green field coordinator in Amhara region, says, “From those ToT participants who became master trainers, Bogale Lule is the model. Whenever Digital Green invites him to provide video dissemination training, he is eager and ready to provide  it. He provided seven video dissemination trainings for Woreda Agriculture staff with little assistance from Digital Green to date. The feedback in every session helped him to build his skills and knowledge as a master trainer. He has now become a qualified coach which he feels confident about.  In all the Woredas where he participated as a trainer, the feedback from the trainees is always praising him for his training techniques as suitable and easy to understand.”

Speaking of the training he is providing, Bogale said, “What makes me more interested in video production and dissemination training is the fact that I have witnessed the social change it has brought to farmers. I believe that video dissemination will be expanded in all regions and woredas and if it is implemented for the benefit of all farmers, it will increase production and productivity.” Currently, Bogale is providing independent video dissemination training for participants. Tesfu said, “Although there are many trainers in the Amhara region, he has excelled and has become a coach who is known for his bravery. As such, he is a model trainer who has been instrumental in helping Digital Green effectively implement training plans in a timely manner.”

 

Humanizing a Product

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A Revelation

Koteshwaramma and her husband Venkateshwar Rao are farmers from Kopparu village in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. Like many farmers around their village and district, they have been cultivating chilli on their one-acre rented agricultural land. 

To give an overview, chilli cultivation has become very input intensive over the years, which means that the risks involved in growing chilli crops have also increased. Over the years, climate change, unpredictable and extreme weather events, have made chilli crops increasingly susceptible to new viruses and pest infestations. In fact, there have been many cases of virus wiping out entire chilli fields of farmers, forcing them to go for re-plantation. 

Without adequate information about changing climatic conditions, unpredictable markets, and higher costs of production, Koteshwaramma and Venkateshwar were faced with a dilemma on whether to plough on. In 2019-2020, with the support from the Andhra Pradesh Government DoAC and RySS Community Extension functionaries, they adopted climate resilient natural farming methods to cultivate chilli crops. Some of these practices include using locally available resources to apply them to chilli crops, spraying botanical decoctions, extracts, and a wide variety of intercrops in chilli to help contain virus and pest infestations. 

Within a year of their transition to natural farming, Koteshwaramma and Venkateshwar Rao have seen significant success with 25 quintal of red chilli yields, and minimal farming expenses. Their success has become an inspiration for many farmers in and around their communities, and also across the state. There have been media articles written about this farming couple, and Koteshwaramma was also awarded as the ‘Best Farmer’ in the chilli crop and natural farming category. 

While Koteshwaramma and Venkateshwar Rao have continued to practice natural farming methods of chilli cultivation, the Digital Green team has followed them over a period of the cropping cycle to document their best practices in video form. This has now become a 12-part video series of Package of Practices. When we ask Koteshwaramma about her success in chilli cultivation, she promptly says that it has been due to the timely advisory and messages that she received on the climate resilient, natural farming methods of chilli cultivation. She also highlights that the support that she received from the RySS extension functionaries is complemented by the video dissemination that she attended to enhance her knowledge on her practice on natural farming.

There has also been a great response from farmers across the state about the DoAC-RySS and Digital Green Green Chilli Package of Practice video series. Featuring a progressive woman farmer, Koteshwaramma has moved many to adopt natural farming practices and learn more about it.

After the pandemic hit, as in-person video screenings became less frequent, the videos that would otherwise be shared within group settings were shortened and shared with farmers via Digital Green’s Whatsapp Chatbot service. 

Koteshwaramma and Venkateshwar Rao are just one example of many smallholder farmers across the state and the country that are dependent on their farming practices as a source of their livelihoods. Timely advisories and the proper dissemination of information and knowledge is imperative in empowering farmers to be more resilient in their farming practices. You may ask, how does this targeted advisory happen given the multitude of challenges that farmers may face across different geographical locations and weather conditions. More importantly, what is the larger story behind this direct impact on farmers day-to-day? The response has to be innovative, and farmer-focused technology that values a human-centered approach.

A Human-Centered Approach

As an organization working in the space of leveraging technology to empower smallholder farmers, who are amongst the poorest and most vulnerable groups, we have been on the quest to focus on solutions that directly impact farmers. With the continuing success of the community-based video approach, we have learned that a human-mediated approach to these videos, featuring farmers themselves as ‘actors’ in the video, and having a screening and discussion in a group setting, leads to higher chances of adopting the practices demonstrated on video. While the video screenings are participatory, we also have to think about what comes after this knowledge is shared? Establishing a direct line of communication and feedback tailored to meet the needs of each individual farmer is imperative. Chatbot fills that gap with one-on-one communication with a farmer who gets to choose which advisory they would like to receive based on the stage of their cropping cycle.

Chatbot presents a unique opportunity to employ human-centered design that follows a hybrid model of communication to complement community videos and anything beyond, with regards to knowledge sharing. This has been a groundbreaking intervention to share timely and targeted advisories with farmers in regional languages at the click of a button and free of cost. The cycle of farmers’ interaction with the bot after video-based dissemination goes like this – farmer gathers knowledge in group setting, and engages in a participatory discussion. After leaving this meeting, a similar communication is sent to farmers via Chatbot which could be a shortened version of the video shared earlier; this helps tremendously with knowledge recall. At a frequency of two to three days, messages related to the cropping stage that the farmer is at, and key actionables to be performed on the crop are shared on WhatsApp.

This has been a continuous learning process for years before the launch of Chatbot. Erica Arya, Head of Product at Digital Green states – “a few years ago, a similar line of communication was set up through the IVR medium, with supplementary messages to reiterate key actionables that farmers needed to perform. We saw that there were a large number of listeners and thus, it informed subsequent steps towards launching a Chatbot on WhatsApp.”

Solutions at a ‘Click’

As the use of smartphones increases in rural areas, the doors to developing digital solutions as effective tools for information exchange have also opened herewith. Our strive to find dynamic solutions on smartphones that can reach farmers organically dates back to 2018-19. Our primary vision has always been to create an application that serves the purpose of adding value. So, instead of investing on a new platform, we thought of leveraging a platform that our users are already familiar with, like WhatsApp. This means that half the battle was already won.

In an immersion visit in Karnataka in 2018, the Digital Green Product team spent days observing farmers’ daily practices, and routines. The team also ran social experiments on Whatsapp groups to study the patterns on how effectively a farmer responds to texts on Whatsapp, how often they use their mobile phones, at what time, what do they click or what they do not respond to.

With a great response from extension agents at first, it gave us the confidence to move to more direct-to-farmer solutions which led to the launch of our first Chatbot in Jharkhand to share crop advisories with farmers. Our initial goal was 500 users, and we started with 467 users who were onboarded. Continued engagement and responses allowed us to take the leap and scale it up to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as well.

During the pandemic, with the restrictions posed on in-person video disseminations, digital solutions such as Chatbot and IVR took precedence in ensuring the continued dissemination of information directly to the farmers, and were further explored with regards to expansion and higher reach. This was essentially the right space and time to leverage Whatsapp as a medium to connect directly with farmers.

The power of an AI-enabled Chatbot on a platform like Whatsapp simulates a human-mediated, conversational mode of communication with our farmers which can yield great results once tapped. The familiarity and ease of using Whatsapp has also shown through with 94% of users responding to the bot once they have joined the service, in Jharkhand. The two-way communication also makes personal feedback an important source of information, and in Jharkhand we have seen over 52% of users responding to these feedback questions when asked. We have also seen that although phones were generally in possession of men, 89% of the male users receiving advisory also shared the information with the women of the households.

For any tech innovation to be farmer-focused, the agency of the farmer is of utmost importance. Farmers can interact with this chatbot only after they have given consent which can be gathered through multiple channels such as Whatsapp, IVR, SMS or even on paper. Trust building also plays a crucial role, and hence partners’ extension systems are significant in onboarding users to the service.

Once the consent is given, the users can start interacting with the bot. Users, in this case, farmers can communicate with the bot using a chat interface or their voice just like they would converse with another person; the chatbot then decodes the words, or voice notes sent to them to provide a pre-set answer. Our learnings show that an intervention such as this meets the needs of the farmers, and the community finds it easy and convenient.

A Way Forward

The caveat is that while onboarding is a direct process, getting continued responses from farmers is still a challenge. At the response stage, we lose about 30% of users, and this also accounts for the aspect of farmers losing interest on Chatbot because it has been designed in a way that it only responds to certain queries based on its presets. With the recent launch of Voicebot, as farmers are able to use their voice instead of text, it garners a quicker response and there has been higher levels of engagement and retention. 

In the agricultural value chain, farmers need correct information and recommendations from agri-experts on best practices, and the know-how on remedies for crop protection, weather information, suitable time for harvesting, etc. Advisories directly to farmers, through Chatbot, have been truly farmer-centered and they have gotten tailored advisories on a wide-range of topics such as natural farming, pest control, that are relatable because of the issues that they face frequently. With the timely delivery of such information, farmers have been able to build on their knowledge of crop cultivation as well as increase their production, and subsequently have become more resilient.

Starting Dialogues: Including Hybrid Approaches One Step at a Time

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Communicating Best Practices

If there is anything that we have learned during this ongoing global crisis, it is the reorientation of our societal values. Now, more than ever, we link our own health, safety, and wellbeing with that of the larger community. It is times like this, where it is imperative to acknowledge the availability and access to proper health and nutrition services especially in rural and remote communities that are often risk-averse. Utmost importance must be given to strengthening these systems in place. 

Digital Green is an international development organization that harnesses the power of technology and grassroots-level partnerships to empower rural communities through the promotion of best practices in agriculture, health, and nutrition. Our community video-based solution has been a powerful digital tool in the hands of ground-level agents themselves to influence the adoption of these practices within these rural communities. 

In 2012, through a series of pilot projects in India and Sub-saharan Africa, we drew lessons from the global success of the community video-based solution in agricultural extension to also be adopted in health and nutrition projects. Samvad, which means ‘dialogue’ in Hindi, was a program started in 2015 to leverage the power of ICT enabled approaches to increase the adoption of an optimal maternal, infant, and child health, nutrition, and family planning practices among women in the reproductive age groups, particularly in the critical 1000 day period (from the time of conception to when a child is 2 years old). Project Samvad is funded by USAID and implemented by partners such as National Health Missions, and State Rural Livelihood Promotion Societies. This work is spanned across 6 states – Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttarakhand, and most recently, Assam. 

Unlike the adoption of agricultural practices which are evident when adopted, health and nutrition practices are not always physically verifiable. Digital communications tools and content, in this case, would have to be more nuanced with effective messaging. Best practices related to specific behaviors are dramatized so that the larger community can relate to it, and are disseminated in local languages and dialects. There is extensive research and contextual analysis carried out in order to understand local taboos, myths, and traditional community practices that are contrary to scientifically proven practices or alternatively that can be used in key messaging for better comprehension. The most impactful practices to share are identified in collaboration with researchers, and practitioners and by spending time in the field to understand challenges faced and the resources that the community can or cannot access. Some examples of the thematic areas shared through videos include – community feeding, mother’s diet, WASH, family planning. 

The dissemination of these videos happens in a systematic manner – they are logged in a content calendar and are shared in stages so as to acquaint community members and frontline workers and guide them through the adoption of practices.

These communications tools and approaches are the fulcrum of change in the community through the dialogues that they create to enable social behavioral change. Over the years, we have consciously worked with agricultural and health extension systems to ensure the ownership of our approach, and expand their reach and capacity of their interventions to impact behavior change at a human level.

A Hybrid Digital Approach

With increased digital penetration and the use of mobile phones in rural India, a comprehensive, hybrid digital approach that combines varied ICT-enabled solutions provides an opportunity to increase awareness, widen reach, and achieve higher adoption by the targeted beneficiaries. This model would also be more cost-effective, offering an advantage over the traditional system of mobilizing people.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly affected the availability and access to health and nutrition services and has brought out innate inequalities in the reach and quality of these services to remote communities. As a result, the hybrid digital model of communication was employed to mitigate these effects and strengthen health and nutrition services at the click of a button.

Community videos, widely used and known now, have been shortened and disseminated via Whatsapp, and other ICT solutions such as IVR (Interactive Voice Response) for audio messages, and Chatbots have complemented the video-based outreach to reach ground level agents of change at any point of time. The ‘Samvad Mobile Vaani’, for example, is the free-of-cost IVR-based platform that allows communities to listen to health, nutrition, and family planning messages just by giving a missed call and receiving a call back from the system. The two-way communication that this platform provides is unique wherein the audience can hear the pre-recorded message and also record their own in response to what they are listening to. This can include feedback, queries, and even sharing experiences.

One successful example of this has been with Salma Kathun, a mother of an 8-month-old child in Jai Nagar, who was not aware of the importance of a balanced diet for her child’s growth, as a result of which her child was very weak. When Sharya Bano, an Anganwadi worker showed her a video on complementary feeding and shared the Samvad Mobile Vaani number with her, she became a frequent listener and started following the practices suggested. Since then, her child’s health has improved, and has gained weight as well. 

Phone Survey to Assess the Effectiveness of a Hybrid Approach

After one and a half years since the pandemic, Digital Green conducted a phone-based survey to gain insights into the utility and the merits of a combined hybrid approach with varied communications channels. This was also conducted to get a better understanding of the implications of COVID-19 on the health and nutrition in these communities, and the training and knowledge of frontline workers about their roles and responsibilities. 

The survey found that the reach of the various mediums of communication was higher for women, standing at 88% compared to men which were at 62%. All digital tools used to disseminate messages to the community are targeted towards both men and women as in most cases, men of the household have had singular access to mobile phone devices.

Given the vitality and influence of frontline workers, the survey found that community exposure through non-digital mediums was much higher – over 77% of community members have been made aware of these digital tools through frontline workers. Since exposure through frontline workers is higher, we have focused on their capacity building to enable them in using digital tools for sharing videos and relevant information through Whatsapp. 

Almost all community members who have received IVR phone calls, or watched these videos, have found them useful because they have provided relevant information on health and nutrition, and have been easy to understand. As IVR offers a unique advantage of being accessed through any mobile device at any time, awareness around this still needs to be increased over time.

Digital Green signs MoU with JSLPS to jointly implement ATLAS (Advancing Tribal Livelihoods and Self-reliance) Project in Jharkhand

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Across India, small-scale producers (SSPs) lack information and agency to access and negotiate competitive market prices, often receiving as little as 25% of their crops’ final sales price. Gender inequalities around literacy, digital confidence, access, and ownership of information widens the gap further, limiting their potential to build sustainable and resilient livelihoods. This divide only becomes more nuanced and exacerbated within tribal communities and tribal women in particular. Tribal majority areas have the highest poverty levels in the country as livelihoods depend on forests, agriculture, livestock, and wage labor. There has been a major push, supported by the Department of Agriculture and led by the Small Farmer Agri-Business Consortium, and National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), to aggregate individual SSPs to FPOs and Farmer Producer Groups to unlock the benefits of group purchases and sales to improve livelihoods. Women-focused and gender-segregated farmer producer groups, in particular, can empower women’s agency, decision-making abilities, and bargaining power thereby increasing income and reducing gender inequities.

On 26th August 2021, Digital Green signed an MoU with Jharkhand State Livelihoods Promotion Society (JSLPS) to jointly implement the ATLAS (Advancing Tribal Livelihoods and Self-reliance) project in the state of Jharkhand over the next 18 months. This project will enhance the capacity, resilience, and self-determination of over 50,000+ tribal women farmers to help improve productivity, understand market value chains, and improve livelihoods. 

Digital Green has been working in partnership with JSLPS since 2014 to introduce and institutionalize the ICT-enabled community-based approach with audio-visual extension in over 15 districts across the state. Over the years, Digital Green has successfully integrated the video-based extension – training over 1500 FLWs on video dissemination and facilitation, and 4 teams on community video production module and production support to develop 60+ community videos. Some thematic support areas have included sustainable agriculture best practices, technical knowledge on over 30 crops and practices, including a handbook CMSA (Community Managed Sustainable Agriculture) practices, and an NPM-based (Non-pesticidal management) annual crop calendar. 

On this partnership, Krishnan Pallassana, Country Director India at Digital Green stated – “Agency and leadership of women farmers is critical to build resilience and sustainability in agriculture. Our partnership with JSLPS, based on our shared vision, will pilot and deliver digital innovations and solutions to empower tribal women farmers.”

ATLAS pairs scalable, high-quality agricultural and post-harvest advisory services and coaching with a mobile application – Kisan Diary Enterprise, an intuitive digital tool that enables transparent data sharing to improve FPO performance and support buyer discovery and aggregation of commodities for sale. These digital advisories on select commodities targeting tribal women farmers will equip them with information to meet market demands. This project will build the capacities of frontline extension agents on video production, and dissemination – our proven community video approach will help women get access to information needed to prepare their harvests and forest products. Further, FPO interventions and leadership capacity building will enhance their skills to manage group dynamics and confidently navigate market opportunities to improve collective sales by tribal women.

Ms Nancy Sahay, IAS, CEO of JSLPS concluded – “JSLPS team is grateful to Digital Green for their support in enhancing the capacity of our women farmers and helping them earn a better livelihood. We look forward to a fruitful engagement with them in the coming days.”

This project is generously funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation as part of an initiative to support racial and ethnic justice globally. Digital Green implements this project with the support of various state and district-level agencies.

 

Supporting livelihoods and the environment through video extension : Experience from Ethiopia

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Mohammed Aba Mecha, a 26 years old father of two daughters, migrated to Sudan in search of a better livelihood, as the production from his small plot did not cover expenses for his newly established family. After returning home to Waro Kolobo kebele of Dedo woreda, Jimma zone, Oromia region in Ethiopia with no savings, Mohammed tried to improve his production.

In 2018, video-based extension activities organized by Digital Green started in his village. Mohammed joined the Jarso 1st Development Group in Bito Genji village, which meets regularly to learn about conservation agriculture and farm-related natural resource management practices by viewing and discussing videos on how to apply the practices and their benefits for farm productivity. He was actively engaged in the video dissemination sessions for vermicompost preparation, tree seedling plantation, seedbed preparation, pit preparation, cattle fattening, and other crop management videos with his development group members, and has enthusiastically adopted the recommendations using the steps he had seen acted out in the videos. Mohammed has now fully embraced the video-based approach and taken on a leadership role in his local development group, even training other farmers on his farm.

Mohammed has planted and sold 11,500 tree seedlings for 11,500 ETB (355 USD), and used the proceeds to buy an ox for 9,350 Birr (288 USD) for fattening.

“I shared my experience and the benefit I gained from the video disseminations to five youths. They visited all my sites and farming activities. Now they are encouraged and engaged in vermicompost preparation and planting tree seedlings.” Mohammed said.

Today, with higher profits from seedlings, Mohammed is expanding his farming operation by planting 2,500 seedlings on one hectare of land. Mohammed now owns a newly constructed house, a motorbike, and a number of oxen and poultry. In the future, he has plans to expand the application of different agricultural technologies in all of his engagements and is eager to become the best investor in the region, even eyeing to enter the export market.

Digital Green, with the financial support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, implemented the Integrating Natural Resource Management into Agricultural Extension Services in Ethiopia 2017-2019  across 15 woredas in the Oromia and Tigray Regions in Ethiopia to increase smallholder farmers’ adoptions of natural resource management practices. Through the Advancing Conservation, Agriculture and Livelihoods in Oromia project  (2020-2022) and with continued support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Digital Green and the Environment and Coffee Forest Forum (ECFF) will reach 42,000 smallholder farmers, women and youth with the goal of reducing deforestation, forest degradation and biodiversity loss, while improving livelihoods of the forest-dependent smallholder farmers in the two target woredas of the Belete-Gera forest landscape.

Advancing Conservation, Agriculture and Livelihoods in Oromia

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Despite their significance for biodiversity conservation, local livelihoods and the national economy, southwest Ethiopia’s forest and wild coffee areas face threats from deforestation, forest degradation, biodiversity loss and climate change. Among those forest areas that face such danger is the Belete-Gera Forest, which covers 150,000 hectares, which is part of Ethiopia’s highland rainforest and a high priority protected forest area. Belete-Gera forest represents two adjacent forest blocks in two woredas in Jimma zone and stretches over 44 kebeles (lowest government administrative units). The Belete-Gera forest lost 40% of its cover between 1985 and 2010. Population growth in and around the Belete-Gera forest; market forces, particularly for export commodities such as coffee; lack of land use policy and planning; and lack of land tenure security, have put pressure on forest resources. Trees are being cut to increase the amount of arable land for cash crop production. Fuelwood is the sole source of energy for cooking, heating and lighting. Large numbers of cattle are grazing in the forest, trampling undergrowth and eating vegetation.

Digital Green, with the financial support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and in collaboration with Environment and Coffee Forest Forum (ECFF), is implementing the Advancing Conservation, Agriculture and Livelihoods in Oromia project. The project will reach 42,000 smallholder farmers, women and youth with the goal of reducing deforestation, forest degradation and biodiversity loss, while improving livelihoods of the forest-dependent smallholder farmers in the two target woredas of the Belete Gera forest landscape.

Digital Green and ECFF will work closely with institutions responsible for agricultural extension as well as forest development, protection and regulation, including the Woreda Agriculture and Natural Resource Management offices, Farmers Union Associations, Woreda Forest and Wildlife Enterprise offices, and the Woreda Women’s Affairs offices.

The project will employ Digital Green’s community video approach to foster adoption of practices that sustainably improve land and water productivity and reduce pressure on forest resources while improving livelihoods. Using a participatory forest management approach, the project will also build the capacity of government institutions and community members to protect forests and restore degraded land in their communities. The project will promote the sustainable harvest and sale of non-timber forest products, particularly honey, spices and coffee. The project will facilitate the formation of 40 women’s self-help groups to address women’s disproportionately low levels of access to extension services, and cultural factors that limit women’s participation in traditional farmer’s groups in the Jimma zone.

The Advancing Conservation, Agriculture and Livelihoods in Oromia project builds from the lessons of a previous project also implemented with the generous support from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. The predecessor project, Integrating Natural Resource Management into Agricultural Extension Services in Ethiopia, worked in 15 woredas in the Oromia and Tigray Regions in Ethiopia to increase smallholder farmers’ adoptions of natural resource management practices. A total of 44,206 farmer households were reached, exceeding our target by 17%.