Need For Deep Knowledge, Intentionality, And Trust For Farmer-Centered Design

To improve the productivity and livelihoods of smallholder farmers and allow them to feed themselves and their communities, their needs must be central to innovative agricultural products and services.

FREMONT, CA: The big issue is clear. With a global population awaited to exceed 9.7 billion by 2050 and determined goals to end poverty, hunger, and food insecurity by 2030, agricultural production will require nearly double.

This rise in productivity must occur in the face of climate variability, natural disasters, and turbulent conflicts. Smallholder farmers, the main food producers in many regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America where populations will likely increase most, must therefore be at the center of solutions.

Many elements keep smallholders in poverty, but one of the most basic is that they have not benefited from advances in agricultural technology—mechanized land preparation, improved seeds, irrigation systems, and more—which have made farmers in the U.S. and Europe more productive than ever.

Heaps of the new technologies we see that are profiting large farmers—they just don't scale to small farms. A two-acre farmer can afford a fraction of what a large farmer in the West can afford.

Hence to enhance the productivity and livelihoods of smallholder farmers and allow them to feed themselves and their communities, their needs must be central to innovative agricultural products and services. To meet this challenge, we'll need a truly farmer-centered design with three ingredients: deep knowledge, intentionality, and trust.

Deep Knowledge

Given the context-specific nature of agriculture, deep learning is critical to creating solutions that certainly work. Proximity is vital, and what works in the U.S. does not inevitably translate. Farming is very complex and involves a lot of variables. Many people try to help smallholders, but empathy is not enough to create products and services that will solve their problems.

Intentionality

From the very start, one must intentionally focus on the needs of smallholders.

Farmers started by trying to sell smallholders low-cost tractors to tackle the problems of inefficient manual land preparation and a shortage of labor—factors that delay planting and decrease yields. However, these farmers were wary of taking out a comparatively large loan, a major financial risk.

They just needed access to tractor services. They never really urged us to be tractor owners. They never want to take on that risk. Active listening caused HelloTractor to change its entire strategy to concentrate on developing an allowing technology, connecting existing tractor owners to farmers needing their services.

Trust

Farmers are cautious. Often rising smallholder productivity needs farmers to experiment: with new seeds, an irrigation pump, a new planting technique, or investing in crop insurance. Farming is filled with unknowns. Poor farmers can ill confer on risk their already thin margins. Trying any fresh is a leap of faith.

The trust you have is extremely important, and farmers value that. Trust aids them in seeing the value of new information and products. Trust facilitates the adoption of innovations. Farmerline works carefully with local agricultural extension officers to create short audio content in local languages. Simply having information in their local language was key to trust-building with farmers.