Levelling the field: A review of the ICT revolution and agricultural extension in the Global South

Khan, Rashid Parvez; Gupta, Saurabh; Daum, Thomas; Birner, Regina; Ringler, Claudia Article — Published Version Levelling the field: A review of the ICT revolution and agricultural extension in the Global South Journal of International Development Provided in Cooperation with: John Wiley & Sons Suggested Citation: Khan, Rashid Parvez; Gupta, Saurabh; Daum, Thomas; Birner, Regina; Ringler, Claudia (2024) : Levelling the field: A review of the ICT revolution and agricultural extension in the Global South, Journal of International Development, ISSN 1099-1328, Wiley Periodicals, Inc., Hoboken, NJ, Vol. 37, Iss. 1, pp. 1-21, https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.3949 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/313756 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ RESEARCH ARTICLE Levelling the field: A review of the ICT revolution and agricultural extension in the Global South Rashid Parvez Khan 1 | Saurabh Gupta 2 | Thomas Daum 1 | Regina Birner 1 | Claudia Ringler 3 1 Hans-Ruthenberg-Institute of Agricultural Science in the Tropics, University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany 2 Centre for Development Policy and Management (CDPM), Indian Institute of Management, Udaipur, India 3 Natural Resources and Resilience Unit, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC, USA Correspondence Rashid Parvez Khan, HansRuthenberg-Institute of Agricultural Science in the Tropics, University of Hohenheim, Wollgrasweg 43, 70599, Stuttgart, Germany. Email: [email protected] Funding information German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Grant/Award Number: 600250.000.001 520-01-01 Abstract Information and communications technology has evolved significantly over the last seven decades, beginning with radio and video vans and culminating in the rise of smartphones and mobile internet in remote areas of the Global South. While ICT is an integral part of agricultural extension, little is known about how these changes have influenced agricultural extension practices. After a systematic review of 131 papers, we find that changes in ICT have shaped agricultural extension, enabling a shift from linear dissemination and “one-way communication”to co-innovation and farmer-to-farmer learning. The results indicate the potential for smartphones and mobile internet to democratize agricultural extension. KEYWORDS agricultural extension, developing countries, information and communications technology (ICT), mobile internet, smartphone, video 1|INTRODUCTION Agricultural extension is key to improving rural livelihoods by providing information on improved agricultural practices, supply of inputs, access to markets and weather forecasting, among others. There is no set definition of extension, but it is widely acknowledged that it refers to communication that helps people make decisions (Black, 2000). The extension covers both technical knowledge and the elements of communication, facilitation and empowerment Received: 18 March 2024 Revised: 11 July 2024 Accepted: 6 August 2024 DOI: 10.1002/jid.3949 This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2024 The Author(s). Journal of International Development published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. J. Int. Dev. 2025;37:1–21. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jid 1 (Davis et al., 2018). Agriculture extension is defined as ‘a system which assists a farm through educational procedures, in improving farming methods and techniques, increasing production efficiency and income, bettering their levels of living and lifting the social and educational standards of rural life’(Maunder, 1972, p. 3). Agricultural extension has evolved over nearly 4,000 years (Allanson, 1988; Jones & Garforth, 1994). The first known example of “traditional”information dissemination tool is clay tablets bearing inscribed instructions on watering crops to address a rat problem in Mesopotamia (Ahmed, 1982). Similarly, the Han Dynasty in Imperial China (25–220 AD) used agricultural information services. During the Sung and Yuan dynasties (960–1,368), the invention of woodblock printing facilitated the promotion of agricultural extension through practical handbooks (Jones & Garforth, 1994). In Europe, agricultural extension can be traced back to the Renaissance, but the birth of modern agricultural extension took place only in the 19th century (Boon, 2010; Ponniah et al., 2008; Swanson et al., 1997). 1 Over time, work on extension has matured and broadened, especially in the Global North. With the onset of decolonization in the Global South following the end of World War II, the scope of agricultural extension also expanded in many lowand middle-income countries (LMICs). Hence, it is particularly interesting to study extension practices over the last seven decades from the perspective of the Global South (Anderson & Feder, 2007). A defining feature of agricultural extension has been its constant renewal in tandem with advances in information and communications technology (hereafter ICT). Agricultural information systems have evolved significantly over the last seven decades, starting with tools such as newspaper and radio, expanding to television and video, and more recently, cell phones, smartphones and mobile internet. There is a growing interest among rural development agencies and professionals to understand the role of ICT in shaping and enhancing agricultural extension. This is especially true as agriculture faces the challenges of growing climate uncertainties, continued gender inequalities and recurrent agrarian crises in developing countries. Traditional ICT such as newspapers, radio and television, which were popular until the end of the last century, were largely limited to the one-way transfer of information and were therefore plagued by information asymmetry (Fu & Akter, 2016; Islam & Grönlund, 2011). As such, traditional ICT struggled to meet the farmers' information needs and to deliver timely, accurate and customized information (Gao et al., 2020; R. Singh et al., 2023). ICT has advanced dramatically since the beginning of the 21st century, particularly as mobile phone subscriptions increased (Nakasone et al., 2014). Arguably, modern ICT can help in improving the performance of agricultural extension (Duncombe, 2016; Nakasone & Torero, 2016). Cell phones and smartphones promise to support farmers with timely and location-specific information and help in the adoption of more knowledge-intensive production and marketing practices (Emeana et al., 2020; Karanasios & Slavova, 2019; N. Khan et al., 2020; Mbuyisa & Leonard, 2017). With farmers able to request information, celland smartphones have also demonstrated their suitability in addressing information asymmetries (Ali & Kumar, 2011; de Silva et al., 2009; Fafchamps & Minten, 2012; Gandhi et al., 2007; Mittal & Mehar, 2012; Muto & Yamano, 2009). In advanced economies, these tools have become a part of life for many farmers, helping to democratize the generation and dissemination of agriculture information. Democratization of agricultural extension can be understood as an information exchange among farmers by sharing their own photos, text messages, voice recordings or videos on issues relating to agriculture through smartphones and social media platforms. As the penetration of smartphones and affordable mobile internet is increasing rapidly in the rural areas of the Global South, it is worth examining the potential of modern ICT tools in democratizing messaging in agricultural extension, the main focus of this review paper. This paper examines the evolution of ICT over the last seven decades, that is in different phases of agrarian change, and explores how this affected agricultural extension based on an extensive review of the literature. Reviewing how historical changes in ICT have shaped agricultural extension, and assessing how effective technology has been in meeting farmers' extension demands over time allows us to better understand and contextualize the potential and challenges of modern ICT in providing agricultural information. This will also help in evaluating if and how the latest ICT tools can cater to the farmers' information needs vis-à-vis the grand challenges of the 21st century, including but not restricted to addressing climate change and reaching out to women farmers (Issahaku et al., 2018). With the help of the following guiding questions, we conduct the review: 2KHAN ET AL. •How has the ICT for agricultural extension evolved and changed over time? •What have been the advantages and challenges of different types of ICT tools in disseminating agricultural information to farmers? To what extent has the changing nature of ICT led to the democratization of messaging for agricultural extension? The paper is structured as follows: Section 2introduces a conceptual framework that uses a historical perspective to explain the changing nature of ICT for agricultural extension, while Section 3presents the methodology used for the review. Sections 4and 5present the results of a review of the literature on ICT for agricultural extension, focusing on the origins and changing nature of extension services. The discussion in section 6focuses on the latest innovations in agricultural information systems and the concluding section summarizes the key findings from the review. 2|CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK The literature review is guided by a conceptual framework (Figure 1). The authors adopt a historical perspective in evaluating the capability of the dominant ICT tools corresponding to the different phases of agricultural extension services and explain the changing nature of agricultural extension from the 1950s to the present times. The framework shows three parallel streams, which –as we will show –greatly influence each other: the dominant extension paradigm, the types of agriculture practices and the main ICT tools and their capabilities. In the 1950s and 1960s, agriculture extension practices were restricted to one-way, top-down information dissemination from researchers and governments to farmers mainly engaged in subsistence agriculture (Boon, 2010; Jones, 1986). This paradigm is referred to as “transfer of technology”(Anderson et al., 2006; Cook et al., 2021; Picciotto & Anderson, 1997). In the 1960s, many developing countries such as India witnessed massive food crises, which triggered the Green Revolution that aimed to intensify agriculture and achieve food self-sufficiency using high-yielding varieties of seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and secured irrigation (Umali-Deininger, 1997). FIGURE 1 ICT and agricultural extension. Source: Authors' own compilation. KHAN ET AL.3 Adoption of these agricultural technology-based practices required advanced skills and knowledge and the messaging remained one-way and top-down (Briones & Felipe, 2013). During the 1970s and 1980s, information dissemination on agricultural practices increased in complexity, necessitating new approaches for an extension, exemplified in the “training and visit”extension system where extension agents demonstrate the use of these technologies through weekly visits. However, the information flow remained supply-driven (Ferroni & Zhou, 2012). In the 1990s and early 2000s, due to the growing commercialization of agriculture, where farms increasingly specialized in fewer commodities and growing shares of farm products were sold, private players also started to provide extension services, mainly to large, sales-oriented farmers in specific regions. Extension systems lacked participation and accessibility, and as in previous decades, largely remained top-down (Westermann et al., 2015). Over the last decade or so, co-innovation and participatory forms of extension systems have become more common. The co-innovation form of the extension system is a part of the agricultural knowledge and innovation system (AKIS), which includes different stakeholders, i.e., public extension providers, private agencies, NGOs, farmer groups, cooperatives and farmers (Botha et al., 2017). These stakeholders are involved in all steps, from the co-design phase of developing extension practices to the final delivery of the information to the farmers (Friederichsen et al., 2013). AKIS puts emphasis not only on actors but the influence of institutions and infrastructure that include organizations beyond extension systems and agricultural research. All the actors play an important role in the innovation processes by innovating, changing and learning (Klerkx et al., 2012). Of all the actors, farmers' local knowledge and its integration with modern agriculture practices is central in bridging the gap between traditional knowledge systems and modern agriculture practices (Klerkx et al., 2016; Roberts et al., 2023; Utter et al., 2021). Farmers share local knowledge to improve agriculture practices and techniques. It is an iterative process where farmers collaborate with other stakeholders to support changes in farming practices and adopt new technology for improving productivity (Laurens et al., 2023). These phases of agricultural extension approaches were accompanied by parallel changes in ICT. Earlier forms of ICT such as newspapers and radio were used to convey generic agricultural information on crop husbandry practices as well as price developments and weather forecasts (Aker, 2011). A technological shift in ICT use led to the emergence of television and video demonstrations, which enabled to convey more complex messages to farmers. It complemented the need for such messages due to changes in farming with the rise of the Green Revolution. However, with such ICT, information provision remained supply-driven and one-way. Television and video vans for demonstration lacked feedback loops necessary for two-way communication between the agents and farmers. The arrival of cellular phones at the turn of the 21st century and the emergence of smartphone usage over the last few years has created new possibilities for addressing the imperfect information flows between farmers, researchers, extension agents, traders and scientists (Steinke et al., 2020). With the advent of smartphones and affordable internet services, the potential for two-way communication between farmers and researchers has increased (Ballantyne, 2009). Farmers can now watch videos on new agriculture practices on social media platforms like YouTube and share text, pictures, videos and audio files with fellow farmers through WhatsApp Messenger, supporting farmer-to-farmer communication with large groups of farmers facing similar challenges (Kumar, 2023). Farmers can thus communicate with their peers and extension agents instantly and receive real-time feedback on the challenges they experience (Gayatri & Arunachalam, 2016; Singh Nain et al., 2019). The ability of new ICT such as smartphones and the use of social media apps like WhatsApp, YouTube and Facebook might thus support the democratization of agricultural extension. The following section presents the methodology adopted for the review of the literature on which this paper is based. 3|RESEARCH METHODOLOGY The conceptual framework (see Figure 1) helped us identify and classify the literature based on references to the evolution of agricultural extension and ICT over the last seven decades. The literature was reviewed between 4KHAN ET AL. 02 August 2020 and June 2024 using Wiley Online, Taylor and Francis, Springer collection, Science Direct, Emerald, JSTOR, ProQuest, Sage Collection, World Bank e-library and AGRIS databases. The study focused on papers published from 1950 (available in Scopus from 1959) to June 2024. 3.1 |Search strategy The keywords used for the search are as follows: (“agriculture* extension”) AND (“ICT agriculture* extension”) AND (“radio agriculture* extension”) AND (“TV OR Television agriculture* extension”) AND (“video agriculture* extension”) AND (“mobile OR cell OR phone OR smartphone agriculture extension”) AND (“social media agriculture* extension”). These keywords were used for searching in the Scopus database. The search produced 686 studies. The search was further expanded to databases such as Wiley Online, Taylor and Francis, Science Direct and Sage Collection, which yielded 459 articles. We also explored other databases such as the World Bank e-library, AGRIS, CGIAR, CABI, IDEAS, IEEE Xplore and IFPRI database, which yielded 22 more articles which formed a cumulative of 1,167 articles. 3.2 |Study selection criteria Inclusion and exclusion criteria are listed in Table 1. In addition to the study period and the topic at hand, papers had to be available in English and focus on four key LMIC regions: South Asia, Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. The original 1,145 studies were reduced to 398 studies by applying the full set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. They were then reduced to 131 studies after excluding studies that did not actually refer to the evolution of ICT for agricultural extension, its potential and limitations and the use of modern ICT in addressing the complex agricultural practices of current times (see Table 2). TABLE 1 Inclusion and exclusion criteria. Inclusion criteria (IC) IC1 Papers published between 1950 and 2024 IC2 Papers related to agricultural extension and ICT and agricultural extension IC3 Papers that cover South Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Sub-Saharan Africa region Exclusion criteria (EC) EC1 Duplicate publications from multiple sources EC2 Papers without full text that cannot be accessed from databases TABLE 2 Overview of the literature search result. Source Retrieved Included Selected Scopus 686 167 68 Wiley Online 30 14 9 Taylor and Francis 140 76 17 Science Direct 230 84 12 Sage 59 57 4 Others a 22 Total 1,145 398 131 a World Bank e-library, AGRIS, CGIAR, CABI, IDEAS, IEEE Xplore, IFPRI database. KHAN ET AL.5 A coding scheme was applied to code all 131 articles. Articles were coded to identify the historical evolution and agricultural practices during the 1950s and 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s, the 1990s and 2000s and the 2010s to the present time. We also coded articles that focused on ICT and agricultural extension to identify the use of ICT, including the capability and limitations of the technology in the different periods. We also coded the use of innovative ICT such as video-based messaging, mobile phone usage and their capability to communicate complex agricultural practices. Innovative ICT refers to communicating extension messages to farmers with no or limited literacy and conveying technical information simply through voice, or video messages. This methodology allowed us to map the historical evolution of extension and the changing nature of ICT and to assess how effective technology has been in meeting farmers' extension demands. It also allowed us to assess the capability of modern ICT (mobile internet, smartphones, social media apps) in communicating information related to complex agricultural practices such as climate-smart agriculture and ecologically sustainable agriculture. These 131 articles were used to develop the key themes described in Figure 1and are analysed in greater depth in the following sections. The next section describes the history of agricultural extension. 4|EVOLUTION OF AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES The evolution of agricultural extension in developing countries can be summarized under different phases: a) agriculture extension as technology transfer in the 1950s and 1960s; b) the training and visit system in the 1970s and 1980s; c) private and supply-driven system in the 1990s and early 2000s; d) co-innovation extension system in the recent times. Agricultural extension as technology transfer (1950s and 60s). After independence, most developing countries followed the ‘statist model’of development, where the government controlled all sectors, including agriculture and the extension system through centralized, state-owned institutions (Carney, 1998). Top-down planning and information provision resulted in a linear and prescriptive process with farmers at the end of the information chain and no possibility of feedback (Birner & Anderson, 2007; Cook et al., 2021; Ragasa et al., 2013). In many developing countries, commodity-oriented technical guidance was provided during colonial times to farmers producing commercial crops, but national agricultural advisory services were not formally established until the 1950s and 1960s (Anderson, 2008). Newly independent countries in Asia and Africa, and some in Latin America focused on increasing national food production through advanced farming practices (Da Ros, 2012; Kaimowitz, 1993). High-yielding varieties of food crops, fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation systems were introduced in the late 1960s to achieve food security and self-sufficiency, particularly in Asia. Agricultural technology packages were complemented by government support to expand farming system coverage (Landini, 2015; Pineiro & Trigo, 2019; Ros, 2012a; Wu & Butz, 2004). The extension coverage focused on transferring technology from researchers to adopters. However, farmers and researchers later criticized the technology transfer model because it was linear and not effective for resource-poor farmers (Anderson, 2008; Boon, 2010). 4.1 |Training and visit extension system (1970s and 80s) Like the agriculture practices in the 1950s and 1960s, the Training and Visit’(T&V) system sponsored by the World Bank in the 1970s and 80s focused on yield improvement and increasing food production (Benor & Harrison, 1977). During both periods, agriculture inputs and improved agriculture practices played an important role. In the T&V extension system, extension agents trained contact farmers, typically progressive large-scale farmers (Cernea, 1981;Hussain et al., 1994), who were expected to adopt new agricultural practices themselves and disseminate them among other farmers in the village (Feder et al., 1986). However, identifying the appropriate contact farmers was difficult (Moore, 1984). Many were affluent, educated, well-connected and male and there were few female contact farmers 6KHAN ET AL. and extension agents (Benor et al., 1984;Mundial,1982; Taylor & Bhasme, 2018). Other challenges included weak direct linkages with farmers (Birner & Anderson, 2007). For example, extension messages given to contact farmers were often not communicated to farmers in the neighbouring villages (Lühe, 1991). As a supply-driven system, approaches promoted by T&V were developed by research scientists with a few inputs from farmers (Ferroni & Zhou, 2012). Moreover, insufficient attention was paid to input availability, which often limited the relevance of the information provided to farmers (Anderson, 2006). Due to the limitations of the T&V system, the ‘Farming Systems Approach to Research and Extension (FSR-E)’emerged in the early 1980s. This approach was more participatory, involving the participation of farmers, utilization of local resources and use of traditional knowledge. 2 However, the debt crisis and a neo-liberal consensus on “rolling back the state”led to underfinancing of public extension, staffing shortages and the contraction of extension services in many countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America (Amanor & Farrington, 1991). 4.2 |Pluralistic extension system (from the 1990s onwards) The failure of the T&V extension system and the contraction of public extension led to the emergence of pluralistic extensions with multiple actors. Pluralistic extension combined extension services from the public Ministries of Agriculture and Rural Development, private companies and NGOs. The government, private firms and donors financed the extension system which lessened the T&V system's financial burden (Swanson & Rajalahti, 2010). In contrast to the supply-driven transfer of the technology model, the pluralistic extension system was broad-based and demanddriven (Buehren et al., 2019). It was a two-way information delivery system, where the farmers determined their needs, which were either provided by public, private, NGO or farmer-based organizations (Da Ros, 2012; Norton & Alwang, 2020). However, the entry of private actors like agribusiness firms, educated elites and people from the industrial sector led to a focus on profitable, high-value farming systems where farmers could pay for the services (Babu et al., 2016; Zhou 2016). Though relatively good for higher-value crops/commercial crops, it restricted the flow of information and increased social disparity (Singh & Narain, 2016). Private actors focused on large farmers having large areas (Rohit et al., 2017). For example, in India, private players focused on particular regions and commercial crops, where maximum profit could be earned (Benson & Jafry, 2013). Farmers who focused more on subsistence agriculture and those farming in less favoured areas received little support and less attention for improving their condition (Saito & Weidemann, 1990). Farmers access also depended on gender, caste and political alignment (Meera et al., 2004; Treinen & Van Der Elstraeten, 2017). Another challenge to the pluralistic system was to form a mix of extension services that could address local agriculture issues (Ferroni & Zhou, 2012). 4.3 |Co-innovation –innovative, participatory and engaging (2000s to the present) The drawbacks of the T&V system include a lack of in-depth engagement with farmers because village agents did not follow a regular visit schedule. The village agents preferred interacting with large-scale farmers and the frequent trainings that were organized were expensive (Anderson, 2006). To address this problem, further change in extension approaches became apparent during the 2000s, with greater emphasis on participatory aspects and pluralism of approaches (Botha et al., 2017; Ganpat et al., 2010; Gow et al., 2020; Klerkx et al., 2016; Paschen et al., 2021). Agricultural practices promoted under the co-innovation extension system include both traditional and modern farming practices (Dogliotti et al., 2014). Co-innovation is an approach where the researcher works with stakeholders, policymakers and end-users to co-create or develop solutions. 3 It requires understanding traditional knowledge systems and embracing new knowledge (Roberts et al., 2023). Farmers are engaged from the start to the end of the co-creation of the agricultural practice. Unlike the other systems discussed above, this system is more “demanddriven”(Chipeta, 2006), with a focus on group-based learning and farmer empowerment. Earlier forms of extension lacked the resources required to adequately address the diversity of farmers' needs through conventional KHAN ET AL.7 extension approaches (Ballantyne, 2009; Steinke et al., 2020). The co-innovation extension system benefits from integrating analogue and digital communication channels (Birner & Anderson, 2007; Rasheed, 2012). In summary, the agriculture extension system has witnessed a rapid change from prescriptive to more participatory forms of extension services. The extension system has evolved from being supply-driven to demand-driven, where farmers work along with researchers to address issues in agriculture. In the next section, we review the parallel changes in the development of ICT for addressing the extension needs of the farmers. 5|EVOLUTION OF ICT FOR AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION Development in agricultural extension approaches has been accompanied by changes in information and communications methods and channels. The following sections describe the use of these tools during the different phases of agricultural extension. 5.1 |Newspaper and radio Traditional ICT like newspapers and radio served as the primary sources of information for farmers during the 1950s and 1960s. However, newspapers were primarily concentrated in urban areas, had limited outreach, and were inaccessible to the illiterate population in most LMICs (Aker, 2011; Rehman et al., 2011). Extension services used printed materials such as newsletters, leaflets, brochures and pictures to disseminate agricultural information (Manda, 2002). Even if pictorial messages were seen as effective in communicating with illiterate populations, they had limited reach and accessibility (Abdulrahimzai, 2011). In comparison, radio had wider accessibility. One of the earliest uses of radio for agricultural information was the Farm Radio Forum, which started in Canada in 1941 and was introduced in India in 1956 and in Ghana in 1964 (Nwaerondu & Thompson, 1987). Radio was an essential mechanism for disseminating knowledge and information in different languages and formats, especially to the poor and illiterate (Arunachalam, 2004; Girard, 2003; Hudson et al., 2017; IIboudo, 2003). The Farm Radio Forum was structured as a listeners group, where members got together in one other's homes, to listen to and discuss the radio broadcast (Neurath, 1962). The forum members were supported with illustrated material and a discussion guide by the radio station in advance that would aid them in understanding the extension message. Each forum had 20 members who met twice a week and listened to a 30-minute program (M athura & Neurath, 1959; Neurath, 1960). Neurath (1962) found that forum members learned much more than non-forum members. Similar studies conducted in Benin and Ghana showed that radio clubs were an effective instrument in informing and educating farmers (Abell, 1968; Anyanwu, 1978). However, such radio experiments largely catered to male farmers and did not accommodate the demands and schedules of women farmers. Moreover, while radio had a massive reach across rural areas, its monologic way of information delivery means that it could only provide a limited range of information and be used for one-way communication (Agwu et al., 2008; Chapman et al., 2003; Opara, 2008). 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