Digital Technologies for Tailored Agronomic Practices for Small-Scale Farmers

The rapid widespread of digital technologies over the past decades has been changing the way to deliver agricultural extension services to farmers in rural areas in Africa. This shift is driven by the development of digital agricultural advisory initiatives. They provide knowledge and practices improvement to farmers in order to increase their production and, thus their income. However, although they are promising, these initiatives often have a limited impact on agricultural practices or farm-gate prices for three main reasons: (1) the advice is too general and doesn’t match local farming processes, (2) the change of scale, due to in-person dependent agricultural extension efforts that are expensive and fraught with accountability problems, and (3) finally its cost. In this context, it becomes interesting to investigate how to transform the widespread adoption of mobile technology to real agricultural development opportunities. This paper presents a tool-supported approach that overcomes these difficulties. In our approach, agronomic extension services are science-based, locally customized and individualised at plot level. Advice is delivered at the appropriate time during the agricultural season by an automated crop management plan designed by local extension service support. The advice is then specific, and the extension officers can reach out to many more farmers than solely through field visits. Finally, as the implementation service is cloud-based, costs are reduced.