Data as a value enabler in the Agriculture Ecosystem - Asia & Africa

The world’s oldest industry, Agriculture, is reinventing by virtue of digital disruption. The entire agricultural ecosystem has been advancing very rapidly over last few years due to the emergence of innovative technologies and digitalisation. Every player in the ecosystem is striving to remodel or restructure, especially all through the pandemic.

Data is becoming the new oil in the digital world. Globally, Agritechs are transforming the way agribusinesses have operated traditionally, and are exploring multiple ways to collect, use and share data with multiple players. Partnerships and collaborations are becoming more critical than ever for effective data sharing. Based on the analysis of Agritech players in Africa, Thailand and India, data sharing is becoming very vital for solving farmers’ credit issues, insurance, access to excellent quality inputs at a prompt manner.

Agritech players are collecting much more than farm and farmer information these days. Our research on data sharing by different Agritech companies also confirm GSMA’s data sharing models, as outlined in the study ‘Improving financial inclusion through data for smallholder farmers in Kenya’: Agritechs as Data Providers, Data Aggregators and Data Analyzers (more below, in ‘How Agritechs Use Data’).

These data sharing models that have emerged across these regions enable us to gain a perspective of what and how players are trying to share and use the data. Agritech companies are focussing on collecting more farm and farmer-related information even without the farmer’s direct involvement; for example, using, satellite, drones, and API-facilitated access to other relevant data sources.