User-centred design of a digital advisory service: enhancing public agricultural extension for sustainable intensification in Tanzania

Sustainable intensification (SI) is promoted as a rural development paradigm for sub-Saharan Africa. Achieving SI requires smallholder farmers to have access to information that is context-specific, increases their decision-making capacities, and adapts to changing environments. Current extension services often struggle to address these needs. New mobile phone-based services can help. In order to enhance the public extension service in Tanzania, we created a digital service that addresses smallholder farmers’ different information needs for implementing SI. Using a co-design methodology – User-Centered Design – we elicited feedback from farmers and extension agents in Tanzania to create a new digital information service, called Ushauri. This automated hotline gives farmers access to a set of pre-recorded messages. Additionally, farmers can ask questions in a mailbox. Extension agents then listen to these questions through an online platform, where they record and send replies via automated push-calls. A test with 97 farmers in Tanzania showed that farmers actively engaged with the service to access agricultural advice. Extension agents were able to answer questions with reduced workload compared to conventional communication channels. This study illustrates how User-Centered Design can be used to develop information services for complex and resource-restricted smallholder farming contexts

Tapping the full potential of the digital revolution for agricultural extension: an emerging innovation agenda

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Household-specific targeting of agricultural advice via mobile phones: Feasibility of a minimum data approach for smallholder context

In recent years, agricultural extension services in developing countries have increasingly introduced modern information and communication technologies (ICT) to deliver advice. But to realize efficiency gains, digital applications may need to address heterogeneous information needs by targeting agricultural advisory contents in a household-specific way. We explore the feasibility of an automated advisory service that collects household data from farmers, for example through the keypads of conventional mobile phones, and uses this data to prioritize agricultural advisory messages accordingly. To reduce attrition, such a system must avoid lengthy inquiry. Therefore, our objective was to identify a viable trade-off between low data requirements and useful household-specific prioritizations of advisory messages. At three sites in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania in-dependently, we collected experimental preference rankings from smallholder farmers for receiving information about different agricultural and livelihood practices. At each site, we identified socio-economic household variables that improved model-based predictions of individual farmers’information preferences. We used the models to predict household-specific rankings of information options based on 2–4 variables, requiring the farmer to answer between 5 and 10 questions through an ICT interface. These predicted rankings could inform household-specific prioritizations of advisory messages in a digital agro-advisory application. Household-specific “top 3” options suggested by the models were better-fit to farmers’preferences than a random selection of 3 options by 48–68%, on average. The analysis shows that relatively limited data inputs from farmers, in a simple format, can be used to increase the client-orientation of ICT-mediated agricultural extension. This suggests that household-specific prioritization of agricultural advisory messages through digital two-way communication is feasible. In future digital agricultural advisory applications, collecting little data from farmers at each interaction may feed into learning algorithms that continuously improve the targeting of advice

Assessing climate change vulnerability and its effects on food security: Testing a new toolkit in Tanzania

The working paper presents a new toolkit for the implementation of a participatory vulnerability assessment (PVA) in rural localities, by introducing the methodology, as well as the findings, from a pilot study in Sokoine (Zepisa, Hombolo Ward) in Tanzania. It is based on a participatory methodological approach and follows a multidimensional conceptualisation of social vulnerability to climate change. The methodology is designed to equip project implementers who have limited resources to assess the occurrence and consequences of climate impacts on local livelihood strategies and food systems. It will assist them in understanding local views on how climate change may affect them, what kind of coping strategies are already in place and how their adaptive capacity can be enhanced through measures that are tailored to the profiles of different local groups

FIRST EXPERIENCES WITH A NOVEL FARMER CITIZEN SCIENCE APPROACH: CROWDSOURCING PARTICIPATORY VARIETY SELECTION THROUGH ON-FARM TRIADIC COMPARISONS OF TECHNOLOGIES (TRICOT)

SUMMARYRapid climatic and socio-economic changes challenge current agricultural R&D capacity. The necessary quantum leap in knowledge generation should build on the innovation capacity of farmers themselves. A novel citizen science methodology, triadic comparisons of technologies or tricot, was implemented in pilot studies in India, East Africa, and Central America. The methodology involves distributing a pool of agricultural technologies in different combinations of three to individual farmers who observe these technologies under farm conditions and compare their performance. Since the combinations of three technologies overlap, statistical methods can piece together the overall performance ranking of the complete pool of technologies. The tricot approach affords wide scaling, as the distribution of trial packages and instruction sessions is relatively easy to execute, farmers do not need to be organized in collaborative groups, and feedback is easy to collect, even by phone. The tricot approach provides interpretable, meaningful results and was widely accepted by farmers. The methodology underwent improvement in data input formats. A number of methodological issues remain: integrating environmental analysis, capturing gender-specific differences, stimulating farmers' motivation, and supporting implementation with an integrated digital platform. Future studies should apply the tricot approach to a wider range of technologies, quantify its potential contribution to climate adaptation, and embed the approach in appropriate institutions and business models, empowering participants and democratizing science

Citizen science breathes new life into participatory agricultural research : A review

Participatory research can improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and scope of research processes, and foster social inclusion, empowerment and sustainability. Yet despite four decades of agricultural research institutions exploring and developing methods for participatory research, it has never become mainstream in the agricultural technology development cycle. Citizen science promises an innovative approach to participation in research, using the unique facilities of new digital technologies, but its potential in agricultural research participation has not been systematically probed. To this end, we conducted a critical literature review. We found that citizen science opens up four opportunities for creatively reshaping research: i) new possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration, ii) rethinking configurations of socio-computational systems, iii) research on democratization of science more broadly, and iv) new accountabilities. Citizen science also brings a fresh perspective on the barriers to institutionalizing participation in the agricultural sciences. Specifically, we show how citizen science can reconfigure cost-motivation-accountability combinations using digital tools, open up a larger conceptual space of experimentation, and stimulate new collaborations. With appropriate and persistent institutional support and investment, citizen science can therefore have a lasting impact on how agricultural science engages with farming communities and wider society, and more fully realize the promises of participation

Seeds for needs: participatory variety selection

Varietal preference is a carefully weighed balance between consumption and production characteristics. Farmers not only select the high yielding varieties but prefer landraces because of their taste, nutritional value and the ability to grow with fewer inputs. Differences in temperatures, rainfall and length of the grain filling period result in major variations in performance across the three sites. In K’ok’a performance was generally poor compared to Cheffe Donsa and Ejere because of shorter seasons and higher temperatures. In contrast several varieties yielded well in K’ok’a but not in Ejere which is an area that is less stressful in terms of temperature and rainfall. This suggests that most of the good performing varieties hav traits for specific adaptation. We found that locally adapted varieties are the best option for farmers in the three sites. Farmers in Ejera and Cheffe Donsa are able to choose from many accessions due to more favorable environmental conditions. Differences between locally adapted accessions and other categories were highest in K’ok’a which suggests that there is a need for accessions with specific adaptive traits for these suboptimal conditions

Seeds for needs: perceptions on climate change

Ethiopia is known for having a high diversity of durum wheat landraces. Most farmers in East Shewa’a have been replacing their landraces with modern varieties. These uniformly performing varieties require significant amount of external inputs and have less genetic variability and adaptive capacity to grow under more extreme climatic conditions. With changing climatic conditions there is a need for crops and varieties that can be grown in harsher environments. This project focuses on durum wheat and barley which are important cereals in the smallholders’ production systems

Seeds for needs: adaptation to climate change - Innovative tools to match seeds to the needs of women farmers in Ethiopia

As climate change continues to drastically affect food security around the world, many farmers are in need of new crops and crop varieties that can be grown in the changed environment of their farms. Adaptation options to climate change already exist in genebanks and other farmers’ fields in the form of germplasm and seeds, but the challenge is to identify them and then disseminate them in the right environments and under the right conditions, and in ways that satisfy the needs of farmers and increase the resilience of the productive systems. There is a general consensus among farmers interviewed in household survey and focus group discussion that there is an increased temperature and decreased rainfall; in addition, rainfall is also perceived to be more erratic and the rainy season shorter, thus there is a decline in the length of growing period. This is affecting the productivity of two major cereals in smallholder farmers’ production system: barley and durum wheat. One possible answer to this is to provide farmers with varieties that are better adapted to the existing climatic conditions. Ethiopia is endowed with a large amount of the needed diversity conserved in the national gene bank at the Institute of Biodiversity Conservation (IBC)