Impact

Digital Green partners with farmers, grassroots organizations and government agencies in four countries on two continents, leveraging our AI-powered platform to co-create sustainable farming solutions of the community and for the community. Founded in 2008, and working alongside talented, dedicated collaborators, we have made great strides in empowering small-scale farmers.

What It Takes

Improving farm productivity and, in turn, the lives and communities of the farmers themselves is a complex, collaborative process. In each country, it begins with the public extension system, in which front line workers train farmers in best practices. Because each worker serves an extensive community, Digital Green provides them, farmer groups, and farmers themselves with an AI-powered assistant that can be applied to a variety of highly efficient and easy-to-navigate tasks. Embedded in the platform are:

Climate smart agriculture
Gender inclusive design

Climate-smart agriculture

Globally, there are an estimated 570 million small-scale farm households, each one a minimal contributor to climate change. To build prosperous communities, farmers need to adopt new practices that improve their productivity and maintain healthy farming systems. Technology and human-mediated data collection and sharing are central to the innovative solutions emerging to meet this critical need.

In developing and sharing our AI-powered tools, we promote Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices that are shown to have both environmental and livelihood benefits for farmers, such as optimizing use of fertilizer and water and livestock feed formulations. We also focus on providing extension agents with CSA interventions that help improve the lives of vulnerable women farmers. And, on an ongoing basis, we help our partners seek funding that supports community-level, climate smart investments and continue to explore how collecting data can be incentivized and used to benefit farmers.

Gender inclusive design

Women comprise more than 60 percent of the farmers Digital Green helps to empower. So designing and providing tech tools with their inherent needs, challenges and skills in mind is paramount to our efforts. Research suggests that while many software and app developers intend to develop gender-neutral technology, inherent design flaws cause them to be more appropriate for or responsive to men or women. Such technologies can subsequently perpetuate gender norms and gaps.

Users of our apps and products not only believe them to be gender-neutral, but have used them to empower women. In India, for example, extension agents use our tools to feature women farmers as role models, promote practices reducing women's labor and demonstrate healthy intra-household decision-making. In Ethiopia, the agents have incorporated women’s empowerment content, such as shared responsibilities and increased decision-making power, into videos and chatbots.

Impact

Cost Reduction

Reduced the cost per farmer of adopting a safer, more efficient farming practice from $35 to $3.50, making our methods 10 times more cost-effective than traditional approaches
Tech-assisted solutions

Provided assistance to more than 8.2 million farmers, 43% of whom are women
Increase Income

Increased farmer incomes by up to 24%
Increase production

Increased crop yields by up to 17%
Partnership

Partnered with Ministries of Agriculture in Ethiopia, India, and Kenya and participated in World Bank programs, such as the National Rural Livelihood Mission in India and the Agricultural Growth Program in Ethiopia.
Gather Data

Helped over 104,000 government extension agents facilitate video-training screenings and capture farmer feedback and data.
Content

Facilitated the production of 10,000+ location-specific, climate-smart videos in 40 languages.

Success Stories

Diagnosing Crop Threats with a Tap, Not a Lab
Sweet Success: How Modern Beekeeping Is Changing Lives in Ethiopia
Women Who Grow: How women farmers in Odisha, India are at the forefront of the digital agriculture revolution
Breaking Language Barriers: Empowering Ethiopian Farmers with Multilingual Digital Agricultural Tools
A New Frontier for Farmer.Chat: Enhanced Smallholder Farmer Support with OpenAI’s Operator Research Preview