Tag: farmers

Women Who Grow: How women farmers in Odisha, India are at the forefront of the digital agriculture revolution

Posted on by michael

In the heart of verdant Odisha, India a quiet shift is underway. Thousands of women farmers under the Swayam Sampurna Farmer Producer Organisation (FPO) are transforming agriculture – embracing digital tools to secure their livelihoods, boost climate-smart crop production and make data-driven decisions.

Swayam Sampurna, which roughly translates to “complete self-reliance”, is an FPO created by women farmers, for women farmers – consisting of over 4000 members spread across 139 villages in Odisha, India. The organisation is headed by an all-women Board of Directors, and is staffed by Community Resource Persons (CRPs) who are women farmers well versed in the unique needs of each community they serve. 

These smallholder farmers often face delays in receiving timely and tailored guidance on farming practices, seeds and inputs. Many farmers rely on traditional advisories and must depend on infrequent visits from government horticulture agents or travel long distances to agriculture departments. Delayed access to advisories can lead to many missed opportunities to improve yields for major local crops like millet, watermelon and tomato.

Digital Green Trust has introduced digital interventions across all points of the agricultural value chain, empowering the women of Swayam Sampurna to make data-driven decisions for their farms and families.

Video Advisories Promote Climate-Smart Agricultural Practices

The use of chemical fertilizers is prevalent in India, but heavy use has serious health and environmental effects including reduced soil fertility and contamination of water sources. 

Digital Green’s video advisories, made by digitally-equipped women farmers, and shared by trained women CRPs,  promote the use and preparation of climate-smart, organic fertilizers to improve crop health. “By watching videos, I’ve started preparing organic manure to reduce input costs and improve the health of my watermelon crop,” says a farmer.

E-Farm Collects Data to Boost Demand 

The E-farm application empowers CRPs to generate demand digitally instead of manual, paper-based collection from each farm. Farmers can capture product demand directly from their fields, collecting data efficiently.

With this intervention, CRPs free up valuable time otherwise spent manually recording data from each farmer. Kabita Taria, a CRP from the Baunsnali Gram Panchayat explains: “Previously, we had to travel to collect indents from farmers. Now, with e-Farm, everything is updated instantly on the app!”

By leveraging e-Farm’s digitally aggregated demand data, Swayam Sampurna can enhance their bargaining power and use their insights to negotiate better prices for their crops.

Farmer.Chat Provides Real-Time, Customized Advisory

CRPs use Farmer.Chat to provide accurate and timely answers to questions from the farming collective. Farmers often seek real-time advice on managing pest attacks and treating crop diseases. A farmer explains, “The platform offers tailored advice for the crops I grow, making it more relevant and easy to follow. I can find useful recommendations anytime, helping me make timely decisions for better results on my farm.”

With Farmer.Chat, Swayam Sampurna’s farmers no longer have to rely on bi-monthly visits from horticulture experts – often too late to tackle urgent pest and disease issues. “Now we can get all the information very easily, without depending on the nearest medicine shop,” says Singha Tudu, a farmer from Jashipur who had been struggling to address crop diseases effectively.

Empowering Women through Capacity Building

Through Digital Green’s tailored training program, CRPs are equipped with the skills to use digital tools like Farmer.Chat and e-Farm. This allows them to facilitate informed decision-making at every stage of farming—from crop management to market negotiations.

As women farmers themselves, CRPs understand the specific challenges faced by their communities. Their ability to use digital tools to guide other women farmers has created a peer-sharing ecosystem – where each CRP not only improves her own farming practices, but also enables the same for other women in her community.

The Ripple Effect of Digital Empowerment in Agricultural Communities

The ripple effect of digital empowerment is profound: with digital tools at their fingertips, women no longer need to rely on external resources and can make climate-smart, data-informed decisions for their farms and families. This not only lowers their household burden but also increases the collective bargaining power of women-led FPOs, ensuring market access for their produce, and higher income flowing into their communities.

As digital-first CRPs and FPOs continue to spread accurate, real-time and customized agricultural knowledge, these interventions have the power to transform the way entire communities approach agriculture, empowering women farmers – in Odisha, and beyond – to pave the way for the future of agriculture.

COVID-19 and Agriculture: Resources and Recommendations

Posted on by Susan Thomas

Updated 16th June 2020.

Digital Green has been closely following the effects of COVID-19 on farmer livelihoods and resilience, food security, agricultural market systems in order to adapt digital extension approaches to best support beneficiaries under these unprecedented circumstances. While this pandemic presents many challenges, it also creates an opportunity for digital extension to continue to serve farmers and be adapted to support public health responses and new agricultural needs that arise. Digital Green staff have been in close communication with stakeholders on the ground to understand their concerns and adapt digital technologies to their current needs under COVID-19. Furthermore, Digital Green’s Feed the Future Developing Local Extension Capacity (DLEC) project organized a webinar on extension and advisory services’ role in crises and emergencies, including COVID-19. Digital Green blogs are showcasing specific actions that Digital Green has already taken to support beneficiaries during COVID-19.  

Below we have listed a compendium of resources addressing agricultural challenges surging under this pandemic and responses from various actors.

Impact on Food Security

Many of Digital Green’s partners and collaborators are at the forefront of the analysis regarding COVID-19 and its effects on agriculture and food security.  The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has been curating resources covering COVID-19. IFPRI suggests that the impact of COVID-19 in the agriculture sector will be felt unevenly; farm operations may be spared the worst, but small and medium-sized enterprises in urban areas will likely face considerable problems. They recommend addressing food security impacts stemming from reduced incomes or unemployment.

In India, the food-based safety net is providing rice or wheat and pulses to families, which helps families meet their cereal requirements, but there are concerns over exclusion of the urban poor, maintaining food quality, and the long-term effect of relief that may depress prices and affect farmers’ incomes in the long run. IWWAGE put together a study with qualitative evidence from 1331 mandis to show that by comparison to last year, only 6 per cent of wheat sold during the first three weeks of the COVID-19 lockdown. Economic & Political Weekly, a peer-reviewed policy journal,  published an article that highlighted COVID-19’s high transaction costs and uncertainty in India’s transformed food supply chains: food security is at risk as 92% of food consumption in India is purchased; 80% of food consumption by value is non-grain, which means a shorter shelf life and a need for a continuous supply; and more than 60% of Indian rural incomes are linked to the post-farmgate food supply.

In Africa, COVID-19 related lockdowns are affecting informal urban food trade. Better communication between political leaders and market leaders, as well as ensuring that safety nets reach these market actors, can help mitigate effects on informal traders and markets.

The United Nations (UN) University released estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global poverty, showing that COVID-19 poses a challenge to the UN Sustainable Development Goal of ending poverty by 2030; global poverty could increase for the first time since 1990.  Furthermore, non-monetary indicators such as undernutrition and malnourishment, could also be seriously hit. 

In a blog, the World Bank recognizes that it is imperative to keep food moving during these times of pandemic. They recommend addressing the domestic issues that affect food supply in stores. Secondly, countries should not issue export bans, as these would only exacerbate economic losses. This is of particular importance, as some countries are starting to place export restrictions already. Lastly, safe and affordable methods to get food from field to table need to be implemented, including cash transfers for farmers, ensuring the availability of key agricultural inputs, and developing health screening protocols.  Furthermore, the World Bank is emphasizing modernizing government-to-people payments as a social mechanism to deal with COVID-19’s effects.

The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition reports the effects of COVID-19 on food systems on low- and high-income populations, along with mitigation and adaptation systems. Main concerns include food prices and shocks to the most vulnerable. But they offer hope: this is an opportunity to focus on and prioritize food safety issues.

Digital Green’s collaborators are sharing their concerns stemming from this pandemic. For example, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI) published recommendations for addressing COVID-19’s effect on Indian agriculture. In India specifically, the agricultural cycle dictates when farmers make most of their income; therefore, ensuring proper storage, access to seeds and inputs, and allowing for intra and inter-state movement would allow farmers to sell their products or store them appropriately in order to prevent income losses.

Role of Digital Extension

Organizations in the digital space are rethinking how to adapt their work and approaches in light of COVID-19. ICT Works, a community for international development professionals committed to utilizing new and emerging technologies, is providing resources specific to digital responses to address COVID-19. The Skoll Foundation, which focuses on social entrepreneurship, adapted its annual Skoll World Forum into a virtual forum. A session on climate-smart agriculture digital tools addressed concerns with locusts and COVID-19 in East Africa, leveraging WhatsApp and machine learning on food security and locust interventions, as well as insurance, cash transfers and market support.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other stakeholders organized a virtual Global Digital Development Forum  to mobilize COVID-19 digital responses and address long-term challenges to build an open, inclusive, and secure digital ecosystem. Digital Green presented on learnings from digital agricultural extension from the DLEC project and applicability to COVID-19. USAID has also issued guidance on COVID-19 preparedness and response digital technologies and data systems.

Arghyam, a foundation focusing on sustainable water solutions in India, recently released a “content store” with information from partners and government agencies on handwashing, social etiquette, and government relief schemes in the form of videos, posters, and audio.

Donor Responses

Many donors in the agriculture and nutrition sector are taking active steps to overcome COVID-19 challenges. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has announced funding to develop vaccines and treatments of COVID-19, which will be critical for saving lives. The World Bank has launched a $160 billion USD COVID-19 emergency response to protect the poor and vulnerable, support businesses, and bolster economic recovery.

The World Bank has organized an agribusiness management and resilience task force in Uttar Pradesh, India, with the purpose to help farmer producer organizations address the challenges related to pre- and post-production operations stemming from COVID-19. This multi-stakeholder initiative includes the participation of the Government of Uttar Pradesh, the Water Resources Group 2030, the BioEnergy Board, civil society organizations, microfinance institutions, private sector logistics and agri-business solution providers, ICT companies, amongst other key stakeholders.

USAID has pledged $274 million USD in health and humanitarian assistance to help countries respond to COVID-19. The agency has released guidance to implementing partners on how to deal with implementation disruptions resulting from COVID-19.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has policy tools to help decision-makers, including a food and agriculture policy decision analysis and food price monitoring analysis. The FAO recognizes its role in supporting the emerging needs stemming from COVID-19, and plans to ramp up field implementation to support access to agricultural inputs for farmers and herders; distribute kits, seeds, and/or small stock in communities with higher prevalence of undernutrition; and stabilize access to food by supporting purchasing power through cash distribution. In a paper focusing on the role of extension and advisory services at the frontline of the response to COVID-19 to ensure food security,  FAO indicates that extension and advisory services plan an indispensable role in minimizing the impact of COVID-19 in rural areas. They recommend adapting the delivery mechanisms of extension and advisory services, including going digital and joining forces with emergency response actors.  

How are you and your organization adapting your approaches and the way you support beneficiaries during this pandemic? If you see opportunities to collaborate with Digital Green, please reach out to us too! Share your ideas and feedback at covid19@digitalgreen.org