Policies to Bolster Trust in Agricultural Digitalisation: Issues Note

One important constraint to farmers’ adoption of digital technologies, beyond costs, relevance, user- friendliness, human capital requirements, and perceived technology risks, is farmers’ lack of trust in digital technologies. A number of issues underlie this lack of trust: 1) problems of data privacy, security, and confidence in data sharing; 2) cases of misaligned incentives of sellers and buyers of digital technologies; 3) difficulty in learning how to unwrap “black box” technologies; and 4) lack of standards for comparing and certifying the operation of digital technologies. Governments have several potential options to help bridge these trust gaps. These include encouraging firms to decouple their sales of problem assessment from sales of solutions; strengthening public sector extension services and farmers’ technological learning; facilitating the development of risk-sharing arrangements between technology providers and farmers; and exploring ways to promote the standardisation of evaluation and certification of digital agricultural technologies.