Small-scale Producers (SSPs) across the developing world frequently lack access to reliable information and extension crucial for sustainable increases in farm productivity and income. CropIn’s SmartFarm is a digital platform that offers customized, granular, data-driven inputs to SSPs with the aim of filling this critical need for credible and actionable information. As part of this project, the focus is on SSPs in India and Sub-Saharan Africa, while also recognizing that vertical linkages up the value chain affect important outcomes of interest.
To achieve a holistic understanding of the SmartFarm service, the project employs a mixed-methods approach, relying on local partnerships and relevant expertise, combined with a robust evaluation design. The impact evaluation will center on the experiences and impacts on SSPs, but the data collection and qualitative work will also include linked parts of the value chain contained in the theory of change. The research design also aims to offer a comparative perspective on the experiences of SSPs of varying backgrounds, different value chain actors, and different value chains to better understand nuances and heterogeneity underlying SmartFarm’s impact.
The research is built around three components: 1) an impact evaluation designed to measure impacts of SmartFarm adoption on SSPs, 2) a process evaluation that validates the ToC and qualitatively examines specific aspects in which SmartFarm benefits value chain actors and 3) business case studies that evaluate the value proposition of SmartFarm for CropIn’s clients.
