There are very few ‘quick wins’ for agri-tech organizations working to provide smallholder farmers with affordable and meaningful products and services. It can take many years for innovators to reach the scale they need to become viable, with one of the main reasons being the critical need to keep products affordable for a segment of the farming population with very low spending power.

Mercy Corps AgriFin and Rabo Foundation are proud to release the outcome of a study carried out over several months, covering research and analysis into the demand-side, supply-side, and broader ecosystem of the digital agricultural space in Indonesia. As part of the study, we propose twelve potential interventions for development actors and funders engaging in digital services for agriculture in Indonesia.

DigiFarm, a Kenya-based social enterprise and subsidiary of Safaricom, provides a platform for smallholder farmers that offers convenient access to various services, including discounted inputs, financing, and advice on best farming practices, all from a 2G enabled mobile phone. DigiFarm won the Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets in this year’s GSMAs 2020 Global Mobile Awards.

Digital Agriculture Platforms (DAPs) are emerging as a scale vehicle for technology innovators across agriculture ecosystems to tie together the wide array of actors needed to drive sustainable productivity and inclusion for the world’s smallholders at the end of the last mile. While there are different types of platforms, GIZ and Mercy Corps AgriFin present four types of common DAPs characterized by the type of organization leading the platform, including agribusinesses, TELCOS, banks, and government institutions.

The goal of our COVID-19 and desert locust emergency response was to rapidly mobilize a range of digital content and channel providers to immediately inform farmers across the region of COVID-19 and desert locust threats and the measures they could take to protect themselves and their families.