Climate-smart practices become more accessible for farmers through Farmer.CHAT, a Generative AI assistant from Digital Green and Gooey.AI

NEW YORK, NY – Digital Green has announced a new product that aims to enhance the development of farmer-driven content, research outputs, and policy guidance at scale. This service was developed by generative AI startup Gooey.AI and partnerships with the Governments of India and Ethiopia, FAO, Microsoft, and Apurva.ai.

Famer.CHAT is a locally responsive farmer advisory service designed to facilitate real-time communication between governments and farmers on the frontlines of climate change and water security issues.

By developing content based on call center logs, transcribed training videos and farmer feedback in local languages, this service provides critical two-way exchange that can benefit both parties.

“The best source of information for farmers is other farmers,” said Rikin Gandhi, CEO of Digital Green. “Leveraging generative AI technology alongside our years of experience in creating accessible agricultural advisory content for millions of small-scale farmers across India, Ethiopia, Kenya—and beyond—has the potential to be life changing for the productivity of not just millions of farmers, but hundreds of millions.”

Over its 15-year history working with national governments around the world, Digital Green has facilitated access to trusted agricultural advisory services that have benefited over four million farmers worldwide.

“We believe that by empowering farmers with more knowledge about climate-smart practices we can help them increase their incomes while also building resilience to climate change,” added Rikin. “Our mission is not only about providing better access to tailored information for productivity, but also helping people adapt quickly as climate and market conditions change rapidly.”

“AI has the potential to aid the productivity of everyone,” says Gooey.AI Co-founder Dev Aggarwal. “In Farmer.CHAT, we’ve combined technologies like GPT and vector databases from Microsoft Azure OpenAI, speech recognition from Bhashini.in and the ease of use of Google Docs to create a simple WhatsApp conversational bot. Now any government extension agent or farmer can type or talk in their own language and get clear answers with links to relevant Digital Green videos.”

Summary of Evidence Review of Digital Green’s Video-Mediated Farmer Extension Approach

Site-Specific Fertilizer Recommendations for Wheat in Ethiopia – Project Report

Food Security and Sustainability: Investing in human infrastructure for digital transformation at scale

Food Security and Sustainability: Investing in human infrastructure for digital transformation at scale – Research Paper

National Workshop on Digital Innovations for Chilli Farmers – Project Report

Accelerating technical change through ICT: Evidence from a video-mediated extension experiment in Ethiopia – Research Paper

Understanding the effects of nutrition‐sensitive agriculture interventions with participatory videos in rural Odisha – Research Paper

Exploring Intra-Household Decision-Making and Best Practice Adoption Outcomes of Women-Targeted Digital Extension – Research Paper

Making the Government Adoption of Social Innovations Work – Articles