Digital Agriculture

Digital agriculture initiatives are essential to digital development efforts around the world, as so many families rely on farming for both subsistence and income. Digital agricultural tools and projects can enable farmers to not only stay on top of changing agricultural patterns but can also provide opportunities to position themselves in new and diversified markets to earn more income.

Digital Frontiers leads and partners with many digital agriculture activities, integrating the best of ICT into global food systems and ensuring that farmers who are low-income, rural, or marginalized are not left behind.

Activities

Resilience and Food Security

The primary objective of the Digital for Resilience and Food Security project is to improve agriculture-led economic growth, resilience, nutrition, and water security through digital tools and technologies. By building a robust digital practice, exploring innovative solutions, and expanding access to technology, we can catalyze advancements in the global food systems and achieve USAID’s goal of inclusive economic development.

Learn more here.

Bangladesh Digital Agriculture Activity

The Feed the Future Bangladesh Digital Agriculture Activity (BDAA) seeks to promote the efficient and effective use of digital tools and technologies to build the capacity of value chain actors (i.e. livestock service providers, market vendors, artificial inseminators, and feed dealers/distributors) under a market systems approach. These value chain actors should then be able to use the same tools to sustainably and effectively build the capacity of their clients/customers (smallholder farmers, pregnant/lactating women, and vulnerable households) during and beyond the period of activity implementation. To achieve this goal, BDAA is piloting existing digital tools and scaling up those tools that prove effective for capacity-building efforts.

Sahel Region Digital Working Group

This activity establishes and facilitates the launch of a Digital Working Group to coordinate between and oversee all USAID digital activities in Burkina Faso and Niger, where USAID will invest roughly $700 million over five years through the RISE II Project. The Sahel Digital Working Group will harmonize existing digital efforts and ensure the coherence of current and future digital interventions.

Fall Armyworm Tech Prize

The Fall Armyworm Tech Prize was a competition launched in 2018 through Feed the Future and several other partners. It sought digital tools and approaches that provided timely, context-specific information to enable smallholder farmers and those who supported them to identify, treat, and track incidence of fall armyworm in Africa. A total of $450,000 was awarded to the six winners.

Learn more here.