Event | 05 May 2021

Digital agriculture and the rural poor: Challenges and opportunities in delivering results

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IFAD hosted the fourth Innovation Talk to discuss the progress towards, and the key challenges and opportunities in the implementation of, digital agricultural advisory services for small-scale farmers.

This talk about digital agriculture and its potential to reduce rural poverty featured Prof. Michael Kremer, 2019 winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences; Owen Barder, CEO of Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD); panellists from IFAD and IFPRI; and government representatives.

Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD) is transforming agricultural extension in developing countries by utilizing digital technologies and rigorous research methods. PAD works with partners to build, scale, and improve mobile phone–based agricultural extension with the goal of increasing the productivity and incomes of 100 million small-scale farmers and their families.

In 2020, IFAD and PAD established a partnership that aims to deliver personalized agricultural advice to farmers through their mobile phones, establishing a two-way information channel by which farmers can receive low-cost, customized advice to improve on-farm practices, input utilization, pest and disease management, environmental sustainability, and access to markets.

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