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Book (stand-alone)Guide on digital agricultural extension and advisory services
Use of smartphone applications by smallholder farmers
2023Also available in:
No results found.Digital agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS) have a great potential to enhance accessibility, delivery, transparency, scope and impacts of information and services for smallholder farmers. However, this potential is often unfully harnessed and the benefits of digital AEAS unequally distributed due to an evident, widening digital divide between rural and urban areas, gender, and different social groups both within and among regions. Due to low-level e-literacy and digital skills, particularly smallholder farmers in rural areas in developing countries have limited access to and utilization of digital AEAS. Considering the above-mentioned benefits of digital AEAS, their poor uptake by smallholder farmers, and the importance of digital empowerment of smallholder farmers in particular, this guide, targeting smallholder farmers in need of digital AEAS as its principal users, provides a set of tools to enhance their digital skills in terms of basic knowledge and skills on using digital tools, methods of access to digital AEAS, methods of access to e-commerce, and capacity building. -
Policy briefStrengthening digital agricultural extension and advisory services in smallholder farming 2023
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No results found.Common barriers to an inclusive development of agricultural digitalization include lack of infrastructure and reception coverage, high cost of digital devices and management and maintenance of information and communications technology (ICT) facilities and products, weak regulatory framework, as well as poor institutional capacity and governance. It is therefore critical to strengthen the uptake of digital agricultural extension and advisory services (EAS) by clients, especially smallholder farmers to promote a healthy agricultural digitalization that is both economically efficient and socially equitable. This requires the key actors within the digital EAS ecosystem to collaborate and take complementary measures to bridge the supply side and demand side and improve the provision and delivery of digital EAS to a variety of clients, in particular smallholder farmers. -
Book (stand-alone)Transforming public agricultural extension and advisory service systems in smallholder farming
Status quo, gaps, way forward
2022Also available in:
No results found.Worldwide, extension and advisory service (EAS) systems have undergone reforms since the 1990s. However, the reforms of the last two decades in many countries have largely failed, as there has not been significant increase in accountability, efficiency, empowerment or impact. To fill this gap, this document, based on a systematic and extended literature review, delves into public EAS systems in developing countries, with a special focus on smallholder farming and institutional reforms. To begin with, it reviewed the status quo of global EAS systems in terms of institutional change and typologies and regional characteristics of EAS systems based on the analysis of 80 countries. This is followed by discussions on issues related to human resources, mandates, financial resources, infrastructure, and policy environment. The discussions are illustrated with six country case studies. Then, the document analyses the major challenges faced by institutional reforms in developing countries regarding accessibility, accountability, affordability, adaptability, sustainability, and coordination. Next, the document summarises the experience and lessons-learnt from EAS reforms across the developing countries. Finally, based on the previous discussions, it gives recommendations on strengthening and reforming public EAS systems.
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