How Women Farmers Can Drive DFS Adoption

Gender-focused research reveals women farmers can be powerful catalysts for digital services adoption despite facing greater barriers. Studies in Ghana and India found women show higher message recall and stronger recommendation tendencies when trust is established. By targeting women while addressing their unique challenges, providers can create social proof effects that accelerate adoption across farming communities.

Turning Failures into Lessons: Insights from Unsuccessful Solutions

Testing digital farming solutions revealed simplicity outperforms complexity, contextual constraints matter, and co-designed solutions can fail when designers' assumptions go unchallenged. Experience from Ghana, India, and Uganda demonstrates effective solutions must prioritize farmer realities over designer preferences.

Behavior Change Research for Improving the Adoption of Digital Farmer Services

60dB partnered with Busara Center and Gates Foundation to test Lean QuIP methodology for measuring digital solutions' impact on smallholder farmers. This qualitative approach traces causal relationships while mitigating confirmation bias, providing actionable insights for digital agriculture services.

Capacity, Value, and Trust: Unpacking the Behavioral Barriers to Digital Service Adoption

Research with digital farming providers identified three key adoption barriers: capacity constraints, unclear value propositions, and trust issues. Case studies from India and Nigeria show these behavioral barriers require targeted interventions rather than structural changes.

Digital Farmer Services in Kenya: The Farmer Perspective

Research with 1,484 Kenyan farmers reveals mixed digital adoption: 1 in 5 use digital tools for farm inputs while market and financial digital services remain underutilized. Despite growing global availability, inconsistent usage patterns highlight the need for improved farmer-centric metrics.

How to Choose a Method to Measure the Impact of Digital Farmer Services

Different methodologies serve distinct purposes when measuring digital farming solutions' impact on smallholders. This guide helps select the right approach—whether exploring adoption barriers through behavioral studies, establishing causal links with QuIP methodology, or comparing users to non-users through cross-sectional research.

“Lean Evaluations” for Measuring the Impact of Farmer Services

Digital farmer services need rigorous evidence of impact without resource-heavy RCTs. Lean Evaluation bridges this gap, using difference-in-differences methodology with phone interviews, retrospective baselines, and smaller sample sizes to establish causal relationships while balancing practical constraints of working with early-stage agricultural technology providers.

A Leaner, More Nuanced Approach to Classifying Smallholder Farmers

Classifying small-scale producers is key to targeted insights, but traditional frameworks require extensive data collection. This new approach focuses on two core dimensions—Commercialization and Agency—creating a more precise classification system while maintaining lean data principles for segmenting farmers into subsistence, pre-commercialized, and commercialized categories.

Lean QuIP: Testing qualitative methods for impact attribution

60dB partnered with Busara Center and Gates Foundation to test Lean QuIP methodology for measuring digital solutions' impact on smallholder farmers. This qualitative approach traces causal relationships while mitigating confirmation bias, providing actionable insights for digital agriculture services.