New report on apps for farmers in Southeast Asia
Finthropology is pleased to launch a new report, Digital Change in Southeast Asian Agriculture: A study of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, East Timor, and Indonesia
The report, funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), explores the state of development of agricultural extension apps and research on digital farming in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines, East Timor, and Indonesia, in light of the active promotion of digitisation from governments and international organisations.
The past few decades have seen substantial development in the digitisation of financial services, market facilitation platforms and agricultural extension services for farmers. These offer many potential benefits, but the ability of farmers to realise these benefits depends on many factors: access, usability, functionality, needs, literacy, context, and more. To date, there is no synthesis of knowledge on farmers’ digital needs, practices, and the impact of introducing new technologies.
To explore these issues, we posed the following research questions:
Where are digital services for farming most developed?
What kinds of services are available?
Who provides them, and who has access to them?
How are they designed to be useful to farmers and their communities?
What level of uptake are they achieving?
What are their impacts?
The report includes an overview of agricultural extension apps in the six countries and a literature review focusing on the context of digital agriculture, digitisation of agricultural extension tools, and discussions and case studies of solutions (available, under development and speculative).
We found that there are few studies on impact, but there is an awareness of what kinds of impacts may take place, including economic impact (sales, income, productivity and growth), environmental impact (climate, sustainability and wildlife protection) and equity or inclusion (better inclusion for women, low income groups and farming communities). Focus in the few studies is on economic impact.
Dr. Todd Sanderson, Research Program Manager, Social Systems at ACIAR, commented that the report:
“...highlights a significant gap in research on user-centric design and its impact, emphasising the considerable potential for further investigation, particularly in understanding farmers' experiences and optimising designs to meet their unique needs and preferences. An intriguing aspect of the study is its examination of financial applications in agriculture, revealing a lack of specialised apps in this domain. Given the paramount importance of financial inclusion, this presents an exciting avenue for further development and exploration.”
We recommend future research in areas such as the use of apps among different groups of farmers, the usability of apps, and the impact of use in different contexts. We particularly suggest looking into the need for financial solutions and their integration with other tools.
The report can be downloaded here. We welcome your feedback.
