Digital Green uses simple technology and social organization to amplify the
effectiveness of global development efforts to improve human wellbeing
22
Agricultural Extension
Training & Visit: Face-to-face interactions of extension officers and farmers
500,000 extension officers in developing countries
Extension agent-to-farmer ratio:
1:2,600 in South Asia
1:1,800 in Sub-Saharan Africa
High recurring costs, weak accountability, under-resourced, limited training
Extension officer “commuting” between farms
Dissemination of expert agricultural information to farmers
3
0 5 10 15 20
Others
Government demonstration
Buyer
Cooperative
Extension worker
Newspaper
Television
Radio
Salesmen (e.g., fertilizer, pesticide)
Other progressive farmers
% farm households (n = 51,770)
Main source of information about new technology and farm practices over the past 365 days (India: NSSO 2005)
Information Sources for Farmers in India
4
Video provides…– Resource-savings: human, cost, time
– Accessibility for non-literate farmers
– Minimizes knowledge loss
Digital Video for Extension
5
7 times more adoptions over Training & Visit model
15 months: 13 villages, 3 nights a week, 1,000 regulars
Digital Green: Early Results
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Ap
r-0
7
May
-07
Jun
-07
Jul-
07
Au
g-0
7
Sep
-07
Oct
-07
No
v-0
7
De
c-0
7
Jan
-08
Feb
-08
Mar
-08
Ap
r-0
8
May
-08
Jun
-08
Cu
mu
lati
ve
Ad
op
tio
n R
ate
(%)
Classic GREEN
Digital Green
System Cost (USD)/Village/Year
Adoption (%) /Village/Year
Cost/Adoption (USD)
Training & Visit $840 11% $38.18
Digital Green $630 85% $3.70
At least 10 times more effective
per dollar spent than a Training & Visiting
system
Digital Green approach
• Mobilize farmers• Identify local needs• Technical inputs from experts
• Develop local content and story boards approved by subject experts
• Train local community on video production
• Videos feature local practicing farmers
• Mediated dissemination by local extension agent
• Data capture• Feedback from farmers
Farmer FeedbackAdoptionsAdoption verifications
Technical knowledge and expertise: IRRI, CIMMYT, Local Universities, Pvt sector and experts
Use of ICT to amplify impact
Build on existing interventions and efforts and layer technology solutions, thus amplifying the effectiveness and efficiency
- Diverse partners – Government, Private sector, Research institutions, NGOs
- Across different sectors and value chains- In India as well as overseas – Africa, Afghanistan, Colombia- 1 m families in India and over 300,000 in other countries
Capacity strengthening
Effectively transfer skills and strengthen capacities of partners and community
- Created a cadre of over 3000 community extension workers on use of ICT
- The community resource persons have produced over 2800 practice videos in 22 different languages and diverse domains (agriculture, livestock, poultry, enterprise development, health, nutrition, agro-forestry
- Community extension workers have conducted over 240,000 screenings resulting in over 400,000 adoptions
- Virtual Training Institute
• Reality TV show, “Hara Hero,” in development with NDTV
• Vodafone audio message reinforcement of screened videos
• Doordarshan potential distribution of content on government broadcast channel
• YouTube channel (2,600 videos, 20 languages, 1 million views)
• Video/audio library accessible over mobile value added service
• Farm Radio International collaboration to align/reuse content, cross-promote radio/video
• Pico projectors increasingly available in-country
Integrated communications channels
• Timeline-based activities of each individual farmer
• Integrated with Google Maps for grading operations and layering other data sources
• Data/feedback to aggregate demand and target public and private sector products and services
• Ranking of farmers and extension agents on non-monetary-based incentive ladder
• Network analysis to identify and predict influencers that drive adoptions in a community
• Farmerbook, Wonder Village linked with Facebook for farmer-farmer, farmer-consumer sharing
Farmerbook
• Building video-based courseware a la Khan Academy
• Structured practice categorization (sector, topic, subject)
Videos library and Analytics dashboards
• Physical observation of non-negotiable components of adopted practices
• HTML5 and Java-based mobile apps for online/offline data management
Data management framework
Empowerment, Connections
Audio, Video, Mobile
Backend Platform
Institutional, Targeting
Technology
Government collaboration: National Rural Livelihoods Mission, MORD, GOI- Currently in six states and
expected outreach of about 1 m farmers by 2015
- National Support Organization to NRLM
- NGO partners implementing value chain based interventions –lac, cotton, paddy, soybean, livestock and others
Private sector collaborations- Syngenta Foundation, Vodafone,
IFC-JK Paper, BREL, Mahindra Samridhi
Reach over 1 million farmers over 10000 villages
NGO and research institutions: like PRADAN, BAIF, CSISA, ICRISAT
Digital Green in Africa: Reaching over 300,000 families
- Ministry of Agriculture, Ethiopia- IDE, OXFAM America- SASACAVA Africa- Alliance for Green Revolution in
Africa- World Cocoa Foundation- Fayda Market
Sector and value chains:- Health and nutrition - Low cost irrigation devices- Agriculture- Cocoa- Quality Protein Maize
Thoughts ?
Leverage existing networks of community Service Providers
to effectively disseminate and help farmers adopt the
technology and practices at scale
Agri-extension as a business model or embedded
services?
Farmer feedback for further iterations on inputs and
technology?
Collaborations to enable risk reduction at the farmer levels?
Integrate various feasible ICT solutions at CSP levels ?