In the Southeast Asian nations of Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and the Philippines, where agriculture remains a vital source of income and employment, addressing challenges like climate change and sustainable food production is paramount. The region, home to nearly 100 million of the world’s 500 million smallholder farmers, finds itself at the heart of this multifaceted challenge.

Across the globe, a remarkable 1,400 digital agricultural technology (D4Ag) solutions have emerged to address these needs. Southeast Asia accounts for a mere seven per cent of this supply while seeing its own surge from just 59 digital agritech solutions in 2018 to 92 by 2022.

However, the active adoption of digital tools among the region’s farmers remains concerningly low at merely six per cent — on par with sub-Saharan Africa and just a third of Latin America’s rate. Compounding this, not a single solution has reached the one million registered users mark, hinting at a vast untapped potential.

The shifting landscape toward digital commerce

The focus of these D4Ag solutions is shifting, increasingly leaning towards providing market linkage services for farmers. This mirrors a global pivot away from pure farmer advisory offerings that proved to be challenging to monetise for the startups, catalysed further by the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet obstacles like users’ digital literacy gaps, infrastructure deficits, and limited access to capital persist, tempering the pace of digital adoption in the region.

Also Read: Invest in women, accelerate progress: Why gender equality matters now more than ever

Empowering women, fostering inclusion

Crucially, D4Ag promises to reconfigure long-standing gender dynamics within agriculture. While gender-disaggregated data on usage patterns remains lacking, a growing body of evidence supports claims that D4Ag positively impacts women’s economic empowerment. Digital tools enhance productivity and income by improving access to knowledge, resources, financing, and professional skill development.

In Southeast Asia, this potential is palpable – women constitute over 46 per cent of farmers in the region. However, only 30 per cent of digital agritech users are female. The current 54 per cent gender gap in D4Ag adoption underscores significant growth opportunities. With concerted efforts, this divide could halve to 26 per cent within a decade, onboarding an additional 8 million women into digital agriculture.

The climate action catalyst

As the fight against climate change intensifies, digital agritech is rapidly aligning with climate tech — empowering farmers to adapt and mitigate environmental impacts. Digital agricultural tools enable sustainable practices like reducing input use (water, fertilizer, and pesticides), optimising production practices to decrease waste, and reducing emissions. Besides, they often allow farmers to rapidly identify and respond to emerging climate threats.

Despite progress, daunting hurdles remain in unlocking climate-smart D4Ag’s full potential. Adoption of affordable, digitally-enabled insurance lags, with only around three per cent of farmers in Asia outside China and India covered (GIZ, 2021). The lack of adequate and affordable products, as well as limited farmers’ understanding and trust, create barriers to unlocking the potential of digitally enabled agricultural insurance.

Also Read: Can agritech solve the world’s growing food security problem?

The scope of digital monitoring, reporting, and evaluation (d-MRV) products also remains narrow. Granular, reliable local baseline emissions data is scarce, while high costs, technical complexity, and shortages of critical skills like data analytics and environmental science expertise further hinder implementation.

Lastly, ‘climate-smart’ digital advisory services are often challenged by a lack of access to high-quality, granular, and context-specific data, as well as farmers’ limited abilities to act on the provided recommendations. Monetising such services also proved to be difficult, with most startups still struggling to find a viable business model.

An immense opportunity

Yet the promise is transformative — digital agritech could reduce up to 78 megatons of CO2 equivalent annually over the next decade for Southeast Asia under optimal conditions. This highlights the sector’s capacity to drastically cut emissions while underscoring the urgent need to overcome persistent barriers.

As Southeast Asia stands at the crossroads of innovation and tradition, the role of D4Ag in forging a sustainable agricultural future has never been more vital. Realising digital’s full potential demands coordinated efforts between technology providers, governments, and farming communities. Overcoming current obstacles will not only propel climate action but secure an inclusive, sustainable, and resilient agricultural sector.

In an era where agriculture both drives and bears the brunt of climate change, digital technologies offer a path to empowerment — helping farmers adapt, mitigate impacts, and thrive amid adversity. By embracing D4Ag’s transformative capabilities, Southeast Asia can unlock a future where gender equity, social inclusion, and climate resilience are woven into the fabric of its agricultural practices and rural landscapes.

To read the full report, please download here.

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