Importance of Build Farmer-Centered Designs

In some places, the digital sector has expanded in the past years. However, smallholders still have essential barriers concerning access to new technologies.

FREMONT, CA: When people imagine digital growth, innovations in finance come to their minds, not farming. Nevertheless, the advancement of AgTech or agricultural technology is widespread across the continent and is considered a hype surrounding its transformative potential for smallholder farmers. However, making positive promises that include higher revenue, better resilience, and enhanced access to the marketplace and farming inputs, hundreds of farmers are yet to harvest the benefits of the AgTech revolution.

Since the challenges Experienced by the smallholders are complex and manifold, the solution to the AgTech problem is comparatively simple: positioning farmers at the center of the solution. Ample availability of internet infrastructure requires to reach rural areas, as many farmers have no clue about having consonant technology to implement new software applications since mobile data expenses have mostly grown across such regions. Hence, they continue to be prohibitively high for most of them.

The human-centered design is regarded as a problem-solving idea that gives much importance to the user experience by involving the human perspective within the steps of solution-building. But it still has to be wholly penetrated in the agricultural sector even though the principles flourish in the technology sphere of Silicon Valley and beyond.

When it comes to affordable, accessible, and user-friendly digital innovation for smallholder farmers, developers and partners do not have to adapt the pre-made solutions to situations they do not know much about. Therefore, it is incorrect to consider that something that works in the Western world can also guarantee success in developing countries. In its place, they are required to engage smallholders in the improvement process to ensure that they put major inputs into the entire process, from planning and modeling for implementation to training and upgrades.

Since the farmers will implement the innovative tools, it will be a loss to keep them away, along with their vital expertise in problem-solving. Therefore, organizations with a farmer-led approach work directly with farmers and partner with specialist organizations to enable the development of the farmer-centric digital tools that are essential for the smallholders.