Inclusive Digital Tools Project: Scaling climate-informed agroecological outcomes

19 December 2024. Inclusive Digital Tools Project: Scaling climate-informed agroecological outcomes

YPARD and The Inclusive Digital Tools Project hosted a webinar on advancing digital inclusion in agroecology. The event explored findings from the ATDT project, showcasing practical examples of co-creating agroecological knowledge and its role in empowering farmers, enhancing digital agency, and driving impact. 

The session also featured young professionals’ experiences with knowledge co-creation, discussing challenges, successes, and opportunities for inclusion through digital technologies in agroecology. This webinar aims to provide insights into building inclusive, digitally-enabled agroecological systems.

• Speaker: Mariette McCampbell

Resources:

Dittmer, K.M.; Burns, S.; Shelton, S.; Wollenberg, E. (2022) Principles for socially inclusive digital tools for smallholder farmers: A guide. Agroecological Transitions programme: Inclusive Digital Tools to Enable Climate-informed Agroecological Transitions (ATDT). Cali (Colombia): Bioversity International and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). 18 p.

The digital ecosystem and its actors have increasing influence over how food is produced, what food people buy, and the flow of information among farmers, supply chain actors, and consumers. Efforts to transform food systems towards sustainability, including climate change resilience and mitigation, similarly rely on digital resources and offer the opportunity to scale up best practices rapidly at low cost. Yet the top-down and often public good or corporate-driven nature of digital tools can be at odds with the ethos of farmers’ self-determination and empowerment, especially for smallholder farmers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This guide seeks to address concerns with the current digitalization of food systems with a set of principles to instruct development and implementation of socially inclusive digital tools with smallholder farmers.

Van Mele, P., Mohapatra, S., Tabet, L. and Flao, B. 2024. Young changemakers: Scaling agroecology using video in Africa and India. Access Agriculture, Brussels, 175 pp.
Access Agriculture has done well this digital through the distribution of portable projectors to ERA members in Uganda and the videos shown are in different local languages and short in duration making them brief to may be avoiding overloading farmers

Mucemi Gakuru, Kristen Winters, Kristen Winters (2008) Innovative farmer advisory services using ICT

This inventory reveals that many projects are of a pilot nature, implemented by international organizations, have been of short duration and often have not remained after the original donor funding has ceased.

Upcoming

SAVE THE DATE! 23.01.25 • Cultivating Agroecology Transformations • A webinar by GIZ and the Agroecology TPP. Transformation initiatives from Kenya, India and Ethiopia will be presented. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSffc2Zui8j9tJkQKbA1mCxjbF6hM-rg1mRbZEfNB_rqhNryXA/viewform