Parcel monitoring in Ghana, Africa. Photo by Kelvin Trautman/CIFOR-ICRAF

A virtual workshop held on September 10, 2024, entitled ‘Using digital tools to support climate & agroecological transitions at scale’, showcased the considerable potential of digital tools to supercharge agricultural and food systems change—but advocates must move with caution and listen to farmers every step of the way. 

The workshop was held as part of the closing of the Inclusive Digital Tools (ATDT) Project, which looks at how digital resources can boost inclusivity and empower farmers to co-create sustainable practices. The ATDT Project is part of the EU-supported Agroecological Transitions Program for Building Resilient & Inclusive Agricultural & Food Systems (TRANSITIONS), which advocates for climate and agroecological transitions by investigating holistic metrics; exploring public-private incentives and innovative pathways for sustainable practices, and developing digital tool innovations.

The event sought to exchange ideas with a wider group of organizations and stakeholders actively working with digital resources. “We’re trying to bring the digital tool community together with the agroecology community,” said Lini Wollenberg, a food systems scientist at the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT and the University of Vermont, “and to explore how digital tools can better address the human aspects of agroecology—so, thinking about farmer agency, co-creation of practices relevance to farmers’ context, farmers’ privacy, and data rights.

Several presenters shared insights from work on digital tools in Brazil, Vietnam and Peru. Violaine Laurens, digital solutions manager for Solidaridad Latin America, discussed the non-profit’s decade of work on digital tools in the Brazilian Amazon—including the Solis Project, which enhances agroecological practices by co-creating knowledge with farmers, disrupting traditional top-down technical assistance models. The project involves over 1,200 families along the Trans-Amazon Highway primarily engaged in livestock and cocoa farming. “Solis is not just an app: it’s a social innovation that integrates digital resources and an enabling mechanism for continuous co-creation and engagement,” she said. 

Next, Katie Nelson, a climate change specialist at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), shared some of IRRI’s digital tools for agroecological transition in Vietnamese rice farming. One such tool, Water Intel, provides SMS alerts for field water levels, improving nutrient uptake and reducing methane emissions. “This tool is farmer-centric and inclusive because farmers can use it without the need for a high level of digital literacy—which is important for rice farmers that are generally a bit older,” she said.

“Farmers usually have several fields in different locations that can be several kilometres apart and equally far from their home, so this can reduce their time and effort,” Nelson added. She also introduced FarMoRe, a benchmark performance assessment app for sustainable rice practices, and RiceMoRe, a government statistical reporting platform digitized and integrated with the FarMoRe app, allowing for seamless data collection and reporting.

From Peru, Francisco Hidalgo, a socio-environmental researcher at the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, shared findings from a blockchain-based digital traceability system co-developed for the country’s cocoa value chain as part of the TRANSITIONS’ Private Sector Incentives and Investments project. “Blockchain is a platform that can grow to connect more actors and create information ecosystems,” he said. 

“Enabling information sharing is the key element of traceability digital systems, and this calls strongly for implementing ethical and responsible data management measurements,” Hidalgo continued. “This involves the protection of personal data, disclosing the use of data with all actors’ data sovereignty, and also reciprocal information exchange.”

Mary Crossland, an associate scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF, presented insights from TRANSITIONS’ Metrics Project, focusing on holistic assessment in digital tools. She said a key challenge to scaling agroecology is measuring performance holistically while still allowing for a fair comparison with alternatives.

“Measuring food and agricultural systems is challenging, and it’s common to focus on narrow metrics like productivity. Holistic digital tools can level the playing field for agroecological approaches by accounting for multiple impacts,” Crossland said.

“Given the complexity of food and agricultural systems, measuring them isn’t easy, and it’s common practice to focus on measures that focus on a narrow set of metrics, focusing on productivity and economic productivity,” Crossland said. “So by developing holistic digital assessment tools that account for the multiple impacts, we can create that level playing field for agroecological approaches.”

“Designing the tools themselves in inclusive ways is also critical,” said Kyle Dittmer, a research analyst at the Alliance of Bioversity & CIAT, who spoke about ATDT’s work developing principles for socially inclusive digital tools for smallholder farmers. They developed six principles: engage diverse farmers, enhance access, co-create digitally enabled farming practices, use technology appropriately, manage farmers’ data responsibly, and develop tools responsibly. “Applying them will require “a coordinated effort on multiple fronts,” involving collaboration between tool developers, farmer support organizations, smallholders, and policymakers,” he said.

“Whilst digital tools have great potential to further the cause of agroecology, they also come with considerable risk, “said Oliver Oliveros, the coordinator of the Agroecology Coalition. First, they can fail to include those who “lack knowledge, capital and internet, [and thus] further marginalize actors who are already in the margins of the current system,” he said. “The digital divide is real.” Also, data may not be compatible between different actors; there are potential trust issues with data ownership and privacy; power imbalances among the actors in a food system can be exacerbated; and verification and metrics require careful consideration.

“There will always be technical solutions,” said Oliveros. “But to make high tech work, I think we need to think low tech and back-to-basics. So, there has to be a discussion on the management, access and ownership of data, which must be agreed upon by the concerned parties. And the elements and principles of agroecology must help guide the framing of that process.”

The co-creation of content at scale remains a challenge, said Alesha Miller, chief strategy officer at Digital Green. She discussed the complexities around fairly compensating people for contributing to the co-creation process whilst making the most of new AI capabilities and the importance of easing the data collection burden for farmers. “AI doesn’t solve everything: it comes with its own challenges,” she cautioned. “It is creating opportunities for people in new ways – and may leave people behind yet again if we don’t figure out how to marry up the principles that we’re talking about here with the opportunity there.”

That point was reiterated in closing remarks by Christophe Larose, who serves in the Directorate-General for Development and International Cooperation (EuropeAid) in the European Commission, during his closing remarks. “We shouldn’t underestimate the potential of digital solutions for the scaling of agroecology,” he reflected. “But of course, it creates specific tensions and issues that we must look at.”

 Overall, “if we want to contribute to change, if we want to contribute to the scaling of the agroecological transition, to the transformation of our agricultural and food systems, we need to listen much more to the core actors. And the core actors are the farmers,” Larosse concluded.

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Acknowledgements

The TRANSITIONS programme is implemented by The Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, CIFOR-ICRAF, IRRI, IWMI, The Transformative Partnership Platform on Agroecology, and the University of Vermont. It is generously funded by the European Union and managed by IFAD. 

Key contacts for the programme are:

• Metrics: Mary Crossland (m.crossland@cifor-icraf.org) 
• Inclusive digital tools: Lini Wollenberg (lini.wollenberg@uvm.edu) 
• Private sector incentives and investments: Jonathan Mockshell (j.mockshell@cgiar.org)

Access the presentation slides on:

• Principles for socially inclusive digital tools for smallholder farmers
• Metrics for holistic assessment in digital tools: Insights from the TRANSITIONS Metrics project
• Leveraging digital traceability tools for agroecology transitions: A process underpinned by connection, co-creation & responsibility
• Vertically integrated digital performance assessment for agroecological transitions in rice: Evidence from Vietnam
• Co-creating agroecology practices for livestock in Brazil: Solis