are five use cases for D4Ag solutions, which are supported by D4Ag
infrastructure (e.g., ag data systems), digital enablers like payments, and
a general enabling environment layer.
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software and data analytics platforms to help agribusinesses to manage their smallholder supply chains; financial technology solutions that digitise payments or utilise satellite and weather data to analyse the creditworthiness of farmers and deploy new types of agricultural insurance; and agriculture dashboards and decision tools for policymakers.
The report defines the ecosystem of D4Ag actors broadly, as well, to include NGOs, social enterprises, commercial ventures, government agencies and others that offer digitally-enabled agriculture services. They may do so directly
to smallholder farmers or as business-to- business solutions for entities (e.g., smallholder- focused extension agents, agribusinesses, financial institutions and policymakers) that interface with smallholder farmers or make decisions about smallholder value chains. This D4Ag definition is not limited to purely digital enterprises. Rather, many of these companies meld digital products and digital delivery channels with human agents who support the delivery of advisory, market facilitation, logistical and financial services.
This report categorises D4Ag solutions into five primary use cases: (i) advisory and information services; (ii) market
linkages; (iii) supply chain management; (iv) financial access and (v) macro agricultural intelligence. Each of these
five use case categories includes many underlying sub-types of solutions. There is also arguably an additional emerging sixth use case category of D4Ag ‘super platforms’
– end-to-end solutions that cut across all other use case categories – which we believe are a path to the future of D4Ag and are thus covered separately.
Figure 2 provides detailed definitions of these use case along with some illustrations of the underlying types of solutions for each. Further detail on each use case follows later in this chapter.
While donors, investors, implementers and market intelligence actors continue to group D4Ag use cases or categorise individual solutions in a wide variety of ways,19 the vast majority of D4Ag
enterprises still primarily focus on only one of the five discrete use case areas proposed in this report. Given the
early stage of many D4Ag business models and the rapid pace of sector innovation, any terminology scheme for the D4Ag landscape is necessarily provisional. Furthermore, as we will cover in much greater depth later in
Giacomo Rambaldi, CTA
D4Ag ‘solutions’
Products and services that utilise digital tools, digital channels, or digitally-enabled data analytics (e.g., machine learning/ AI) to deliver information, advice, farming input linkages, market access, logistics support, financial services, and decision-making tools directly to smallholder farmers or to other intermediaries of smallholder value chains, including extension agents, agro-dealers, agribusinesses, financial service providers and policymakers.
Organisations, whether commercial or non-commercial, that develop D4Ag solutions or that deliver D4Ag solutions to farmers and other smallholder value chain actors.
While many D4Ag enterprises have only one D4Ag solution on the market, others hold multiple D4Ag solutions with different features and customer bases. Some D4Ag enterprises, such as regional MNOs, deploy multiple solutions under different brands in different countries.
D4Ag ‘actors’ or ‘enterprises’
D4Ag ‘solution’ and ‘enterprise’ definitions
Figure 2 D4Ag use case definitions and example solutions
D4Ag use cases Definition and link to smallholder farming ecosystem Examples of solutions Advisory &
information services
Digitally delivered information on topics such as agronomic best practices, pests and diseases, weather and market prices, as well as more sophisticated digital advisory services and farm management software tailored to the specific farmer, farm or field that enable smallholder farmers to make decisions that maximise output from their land, improve the quality of agricultural production and maximise farm revenues and profits via lower costs of production, improved ability to identify markets and/or better price realisation.
• Agronomic/livestock management good practices • Market information systems and services (i.e., agriculture
input and crop/livestock price intelligence)
• Early warning tools for weather/climate advisory or
pest/disease control
• Customised (precision) advisory services at the level of farmer, farm or specific field
• Participatory platforms (e.g., peer-to-peer smallholder
communities, curated farmer videos)
• Livestock and farm management software
Market linkages
Digitally-enabled solutions that link smallholder farmers to high-quality farm inputs (e.g., seeds, fertilisers, herbicides/pesticides), production and post-harvest machinery and mechanisation services (e.g., irrigation, tractors, cold storage), or off-take markets, including agro-dealers, wholesalers, retailers, or even to end-consumers. Digital market linkage solutions allow smallholder farmers to lower their costs of production via access to lower-cost and/or higher-quality inputs, reduce the costs and risks of finding and transacting with buyers and ultimately increase their yields and incomes.
• Linkage to agri-inputs (e.g., digitally-enabled input distribution, online input marketplaces)
• Mechanisation linkage platforms (e.g., shared economy for
mechanisation, pay-as-you-go irrigation)
• Linkage to market access (e.g., digitally enabled linkages to
wholesale buyers)
• End-to-end integrated market linkage models (e.g., digital
linkage to both inputs and markets)
• Ag buyer-seller digital marketplaces/exchanges
Supply chain management
Digital supply chain management solutions are business-to-business services that help agribusinesses, cooperatives, nucleus farms, input agro-dealers and other smallholder farmer value chain intermediaries to manage their smallholder relationships in ways that lower costs through greater efficiency, improve value chain quality through better traceability and accountability and ultimately increase smallholder farmer yields and incomes by making it easier for more commercial players to formally engage with large numbers of smallholder farmers.
• Traceability solutions (e.g., digital sustainability and organic product certification tracking)
• Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) platforms for smallholder farmer cooperatives, nucleus farms,
agribusiness out-grower schemes
• Digital quality assurance solutions for farm inputs and produce
• Logistics management solutions for post-harvest cold chains, storage and transport
Financial access
Digital financial services (DFS) relevant for smallholder farmers, such as digital payments, savings,
smallholder credit, and agricultural insurance, which increase financial access and equip smallholder farmers to improve yields and incomes and invest in the longer-term growth of their farms (e.g., via better inputs, mechanisation and expansion to new crops). Also includes business-to-business digitalisation and data analytics services for financial institutions that enable such institutions to serve smallholder farmers at substantially lower cost and risk.
• Smallholder farmer payment solutions (e.g., agribiz to
farmer, government to farmer, farmer to input supplier)
• Digital agri-wallets and commitment savings systems • Smallholder credit (e.g., digital credit assessment/delivery/
collection platforms and products)
• Smallholder insurance (e.g., digitally-enabled index weather,
precipitation, pest insurance)
• Crowdfunding platforms for smallholder farming • Business-to-business fintech data analytics intermediaries
(e.g., digital credit profiles) Macro
agricultural intelligence
Data analytics solutions and digital decision support tools that integrate a variety of data sources on smallholder farmers, farms and markets and convert this information into useful country- and value-chain- level insights and decision tools for government policymakers, extension agencies, agronomists, agribusinesses and investors.
• Government agriculture sector tracking dashboards • Agriculture extension system management tools
• Agribusiness and agriculture investor national and regional intelligence systems
• Agronomy/R&D agenda setting digital tools • Weather and climate observatories for agriculture
this report, D4Ag enterprises are increasingly diversifying their business models and bundling services in ways that often blur the boundaries between these use case areas and focus on several use cases at once.
Despite these caveats, we believe that the use case categorisation scheme proposed in this report is a useful tool for characterising the current state of the sector and for ongoing tracking of how the D4Ag landscape evolves in terms of the number of solutions, the reach of these solutions into the smallholder farmer population, investment trends, technology and business model innovations and impact evidence.