The rise of gender-inclusive agritech and why it matters

After completing her day’s work, Vanita Tai Vithhal, 35, scrolls through YouTube on her smartphone watching videos on the best agricultural practices in everyday farming. This helps her to increase crop production and profits. She builds on what she learns online at monthly training sessions on how agricultural technology, or agritech, can help women farmers achieve better results.

The outcome has been positive, Vanita told the World Economic Forum. Over the past four years, paddy production has increased by 25% in the four acres that she and her family own and work in India’s Maharashtra state.

Women make up 43% of the agricultural labour force in developing countries. All too often, women like Vanita face obstacles accessing resources and opportunities that would allow them to grow their businesses. For men, there are fewer obstacles to accessing these critical factors. Closing this gender gap can push up farm outputs by 20 to 30%.

Now, a new insight report by the World Economic Forum — Agritech for Women Farmers: A Business Case for Inclusive Growth — shows how agritech companies can tap women farmers to boost their business profile and expand their customer bases by with gender-inclusive technologies. Agricultural technology expands production and revenues, and so serving women farmers has tremendous business potential.

Agritech companies can adopt the formula of the “5Ps” of product, price, promotion, place and people to crack the code of developing a clientele of women farmers and serve them better. Adopting the “5Ps” would mean delving into the product design, improving affordability, promotion and distribution of the products and investing in human capital to achieve the desired outcomes.

Women working in the agricultural sector in developing economies often face structural barriers like digital literacy, perceived gender roles, as well as restricted access to land ownership, financial services and even smartphones.

As such, it can be challenging for agritech firms to reach women farmers to offer their services. This is in due to a number of factors, including: lack of access to gender disaggregated data that would help firms develop customised solutions for women; high initial cost of acquiring customers through marketing; outreach expenses; and poor representation of women in leadership roles.

But there is hope, as the Forum’s report shows. There is a strong business case for companies to invest in gender-inclusive products in agritech. What’s more, increasing numbers of women are farming around the world, and the smartphone access gender gap is closing, meaning women increasingly have access to online tools for education, networking, financing and doing business online.

There is also a significant shift underway on the perception of women being a key market segment among agritech companies. Businesses have started recognizing the need to be gender-inclusive to gain credibility in rural markets.

The past decade has seen significant progress in applying agritech for improving the supply chain. Using technology like artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and internet of things (IoT) has helped farmers access transparent data and real-time updates on soil conditions, weather patterns, crop health, pest detection and much more.

In Brazil, for example, fintech company Nagro Agro Crédito has shown tangible outcomes by empowering over 1,500 women farmers across the country by providing customised credit solutions, actively working to bring down their default rates, bringing them to the forefront of the agricultural activities through the use of their advanced data platform, AgriSK.

In Ghana, agritech company Farmerline, uses mobile technology to give essential agricultural information, financial services and supply chain resources to smallholder farmers and aggregators. Farmerline works with a team consisting of over 50% female aggregators to empower women entrepreneurs and farmers. The programme has impacted over 2,000 to date.

UPL, a global agricultural solutions company based in Mumbai, offers sustainable farming solutions by involving women farmers including crop protection products and seed treatments. UPL uses digital platforms to provide agricultural support to fight rising farm costs and lower yields. Currently, UPL’s programme spans across a 25,000-acre catchment area for sugar mills in Maharashtra, with over 2,000 acres being managed by women.

Yara India, a crop nutrition company, produces high-quality fertilizers and offers best-practice advice to enhance agricultural efficiency. Their capacity-building programmes have revealed that female farmers are more responsive to training. Yara believes that investing in women farmers can be instrumental to a more inclusive agriculture ecosystem making them promising customers for their products.

Bayer India has partnered with the Maharashtra State Women’s Development Corporation to empower women farmers through modern agricultural technologies. Under the Better Life Farming Alliance, 27 women-run Krishi Seva Kendras (KSKs) have been established, impacting over 12,000 farmers since 2021.

While companies can come up with more innovative and tailored solutions for women farmers, governments need to address systemic issues that women face: restricted land ownership, less access to smartphones and internet, digital literacy and gender biases.

Isolated effort by companies in adopting gender-inclusive techniques is not likely to bring wholesale change. Multi-stakeholder collaboration and an intersectional approach in improving agricultural practices and the food security system, however, has real potential to deliver impact. A collaborative approach among government, private players and developmental organizations can pave the way for gender-inclusive agritech to become the norm.

As the world faces down the climate crisis, addressing food insecurity by engaging women farmers for better agricultural output will create long-lasting impact in the agricultural sector.

Agritech companies that seize the opportunity to promote gender inclusivity in design and technology are likely to stand out in the market contributing to sustainable development.

With contributions from Shreejit Borthakur, Lead Agritech, C4IR India.