The Problem
There is a growing global concern about the challenges agricultural and food production need to overcome in the next few decades. By 2050, the world’s population is expected to reach 9 billion–with over a billion at risk of hunger–and arable land is becoming increasingly scarce. Additionally, developing countries suffer the most from a lack of food security and low household incomes. For these reasons, one of the priorities under the Sustainable Development Goals is to achieve food security and improve livelihoods by raising smallholder farmers’ productivity. Digital technologies have upended business models and expanded the frontiers of information access in the developing world. Increasingly available digital technologies including sensors, geospatial imagery, mobile financial services, and data analytics can be leveraged to make agriculture more precise, productive, resilient, and profitable. However, too often that data and analysis remains in research intuitions and on computer servers rather than reaching farmers or those who work with them.