Farmer-Focused Digital Advisory
MLC VANGUARD | Created by Digital Green
We create digital tools that put small-scale producers back at the center of the food and agriculture system and: improve the effectiveness of the growing number of organizations with which they interact; inform farm- and market-related decisions; and empower farmers to realize higher incomes and overcome climate change challenges.
2,650,000 Lives Impacted
Digital Green has facilitated production and dissemination of more than 7,000 videos in 50 languages viewed by more than 2.6 million small-scale farmers in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Randomized controlled trials that compare our approach to traditional extension approaches in India and Ethiopia have demonstrated:
• 43% gain in adoption rates
• 47% increase in yields
• 17% income increase from sales, in addition to retaining more for household consumption
• Increased access to extension services, confidence and group participation by women
• Increased motivation of extension agents and increased likelihood they will visit farms and provide follow-up advice
• Increased dietary diversity for women and children
• Delivered at 13% of the cost for traditional models.
The Innovation
Digital Green is flipping the paradigm of conventional, top-down agricultural development to give voice to farmers, enabling them to discover the information, services and goods they require.
We partner with existing agriculture system actors and develop direct-to-farmer solutions to help small-scale producers, especially women, access and adopt timely, relevant and actionable advisories and realize better value from farm production while better managing natural resources and biodiversity and reducing climate impacts.
We are deepening impact by developing a decentralized data sharing protocol (FarmStack) to foster coordination across the agriculture ecosystem while protecting privacy, security, and control over how data is used; and developing solutions that collect and digitize data assets and empower farmers to use it how they choose to improve their livelihoods. This work helps to overcome the information sharing bottlenecks that result in supply-demand gaps, generic advice that does not reflect farmers’ needs or contexts; and other factors that reduce efficiency across the system and lead to missed opportunities for both service providers and farmers.
About Digital Green
Our data-driven solutions catalyze transformative change at scale to increase agency of small-scale producers and improve system-level coordination, resource allocation, and offerings for farmers, resulting in:
• Women’s Empowerment: Improved digital confidence and skills, increased bargaining power and participation in ag-related decision-making, and control over resources and income
• Resilient livelihoods: With access to better information, inputs, and services, small-scale producers sustainably increase agricultural yields and productivity, reduce environmental degradation and realize higher net incomes and improved food security and nutrition, enabling greater resilience to economic shocks and climate change.
• A resilient, sustainable and equitable food ecosystem
Implemented in
Digital Green’s innovation has been implemented in:
14 countries in Southern Asia and East and West Africa
