How to Conduct a Market Scan of Digital Agriculture Solutions: A Toolkit for IFAD-Financed Partners

Introduction and Background

Digital agriculture, also referred to as agriculture technology (agritech), has the potential to address challenges facing the agriculture sector by transforming how agri-food actors access information, goods, and services. Agritech solutions are digital innovations that enhance agricultural outcomes by enabling smallholder farmers, agribusinesses, governments, and development partners to increase their productivity, efficiency, and competitiveness. These innovations encompass devices, digital networks, services, and applications. Agritech innovations can also reduce transaction costs, increase accessibility and affordability of agricultural equipment through more circular models, and expand access to information related to production technologies, inputs, prices, markets, climate conditions, sustainable practices, and the prevention, control, and diagnosis of animal and plant diseases. Agritech solutions can thus be valuable tools for mitigating the challenges faced by smallholder farmers, which include low productivity and income, financial exclusion, and climate change.

Market scans involve the assessment of existing digital tools in an environment or context. The goal of a market scan is to identify existing and emerging agricultural technologies whose scaling is likely to have the most significant impact in increasing the resilience and incomes of smallholder families.

The toolkit provides a three-step process to conducting a market scan:
Step 1: Assessment of the Digital Ecosystem
Step 2: Review of Existing Digital Solutions
Step 3: Alignment Between the Digital Solutions and the Ecosystem Requirements: Selecting the Best Option

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