Digital Tools in USAID Agricultural Programming Toolkit

"Digital technology has enormous potential to improve food security in Feed the Future countries and around the world. "

This USAID Feed the Future programme document is designed to demonstrate the importance of digital tools in agriculture and give an overview of the digital tools that are currently being used in the field by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Missions, as well as resources for those attempting to implement digital tools in their programmes. Created by the Digital Development for Feed the Future (D2FTF) team, which is a collaboration between the U.S. Global Development Lab (the Lab) and the Bureau for Food Security (BFS) at USAID, it describes why digital tools are important at each phase from planning to accessing markets and lists opportunities for programme and affiliate countries to develop mobile connectivity by offering, in its appendices, tables showing increases in mobile subscribers, mobile market penetration, population increases, and value added to the economies through agriculture.  Best practices for integrating digital technology into development projects are given as "Principles for Digital Development."

Resources modelling responsible data practices include, for example: Data Starter Kit Cash Learning Program from the Electronic Cash Transfer Learning and Action Network (ELAN). An example of a transfer system for repaying agricultural and other loans is:  Musoni, a completely cashless microfinance institution enabling customers to receive and repay their loans via Safaricom’s M-PESA system, rather than in cash. Another is the Connected Farmer Alliance from USAID, Vodafone, and TechnoServe, launched to increase the productivity, incomes and resilience of smallholder farmers in Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania. Here, mobile phone-enabled solutions are leveraged to improve supply chain efficiency and increase farmers’ ability to access secure, timely payments and other financial services, also using M-PESA. 

Four broad categories of digital tools used in agriculture programmes includes:

(1) Data-Driven Agriculture, for example, real-time data on temperature, soil moisture, and weather conditions; geographic position systems (GPS); or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to collect spatial data. 

(2) Precision Agriculture, for example, geospatial analysis - the gathering, display, and manipulation of imagery, GPS, satellite photography and historical data, useful to visualise patterns of place over time, valuable for crop selection, yield estimates, etc. OpenStreetMap, Geospatial Toolkit, and Youth Mappers Program, which connects a network of 4000 student mappers from around the world to project areas in need of improved spatial data, are examples of available resources.

(3) ICT-Enabled Extension, which allows extension workers to reach farmers through information delivery via digital channels (including SMS, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), interactive radio, low cost video).

(4) Digital Financial Services, examples cited above, offers savings/credit products; digitally-enabled index insurance; e-vouchers (government subsidised purchase using a digital platform); and basic transaction accounts for farmers which store funds, including payments in times of need in the agricultural cycle.

The document concludes with programming resources for work planning and procurement of technology and the use of prizes and challenges to incentivise solutions.