Insights

During the May cross-country visit, teams from India, the USA, Ethiopia, and Kenya came together to learn more about how we are moving towards making our vision of digitized farmer networks (DFN) a reality. this article focuses on the use of digital data collection tools and chili quality assaying. To read about our digital extension visit, please visit this blog.

May was an exciting month for us at Digital Green. After more than 2 years, our teams across India, Ethiopia, USA, and Kenya huddled together in Guntur district in Andhra Pradesh and Bengaluru to make our vision of digitized farmer networks a reality, and discuss key themes emerging from our new strategy going forward.

Women leaders are a major focus of the ATLAS project. The project pairs scalable and high quality agricultural and post-harvest advisory, and mobile coaching with our FPO strengthening and data sharing solution - Kisan Diary Enterprise (KDE) to enable women leaders to negotiate in the market and fetch competitive prices for women-led producer groups.

Women are the backbone of agriculture in India, and that is no exaggeration. They play a pivotal role in agriculture: 85% of rural women in our country are engaged in agricultural activities, and 75% of the farmers in the agriculture field are women. In addition, women are also responsible for the majority of household chores, such as cooking and taking care of children. Despite their efforts, they are hardly recognised as farmers and in most the communities, d power largely lies with the men of the household. Women have restricted mobility, and require permission from their elders and husband. Their stake in intra-household decision making still remains a grey area and is a deep-rooted issue that needs to be worked upon.

Tejo Teneshu, 25 years of age, is a development agent. Over the past five years, the development agents in Edo Balo have adopted Digital Green’s video extension approach in order to improve how they deliver advisory services to these farmers.

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.

In order to identify and respond to the barriers that women face in accessing technology and extension services, DAAS undertook a gender analysis.

Women small-scale producers across India lack the information, and agency to lead resilient and sustainable livelihoods.

Maternal and child undernutrition in tribal areas of rural India has been one of the most pressing issues in the Indian development landscape.

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.