Understanding the reach and impact of agtech solutions

Explore population-level data on digital farmer solutions

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Overview

The Busara Center for Behavioral Economics and 60 Decibels partnered from 2021-2024 to explore methodologies for understanding smallholder farmers’ access to, use of, and engagement with digital technologies. Supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the initiative aimed to:

  • Design and pilot a methodology for population-level research on digital farmer services;
  • Explore behaviors that influence the uptake and use of digital technologies;
  • Test lean methodologies for measuring the impact of digital tools on farmer outcomes; and
  • Develop and test metrics for assessing the value that farmers derive from digital tools.


This site is a repository for everything we’ve learned from the initiative! Find reports, datasets, implementation guides, and other insights – and please share broadly.

About the partners

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is an American private foundation founded in 2000, with an aim to fight poverty, disease, and inequity around the world. One of the foundation’s largest initiatives is the Agricultural Development initiative, which aims to reduce hunger and poverty for millions of farming households in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Over the last 20+ years, the initiative has invested billions of dollars in 3 strategic areas namely research and development, agricultural policies, and input and market systems.

The Busara Center for Behavioral Economics is a non-profit organisation, whose mission is to utilise behavioral science to design solutions aimed at alleviating poverty and improving lives in the Global South. Since 2015, the organisation has run 500+ projects with 250+ partners and grown its behavioral science lab to one of the largest in the world with a panel of 133,000+ participants across India, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda.

60 Decibels is a tech-powered impact measurement company founded in 2019. The firm utilises a Lean Data approach and speaks directly to customers, employees, or beneficiaries, usually via phone surveys, and returns high-quality data to clients in weeks. Over the last 5 years, the firm has delivered 2,000+ projects across 54 countries, effectively gathering insights from more than 270,000 unique human voices.

From the blog

Lean QuIP Learnings

We are testing the lean QuIP methodology to measure the impact of digital tools on farmer wellbeing. Here's what we learned from implementing two QuIPs.

Read More

Digital Farmer Services in Kenya: The Farmer Perspective

Our latest report based on 1,484 farmers sharing their experiences with digital farmer services.

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