From Messages to Practices: Rethinking Digital Advisory for Smallholder Farmers
Climate change is making farming decisions more difficult - and timely advice more important, especially for smallholder farmers. Digital advisory services can reach farmers quickly and at scale, but receiving information does not mean trusting it, using it or changing farm practices.
Spindle Design’s research with smallholder farmers in Kenya explored how farmers seek information, assess advice and decide whether to act. We found the gap is rarely access. It is whether the tool fits into how farmers seek information, build trust, and decide.
How, then, should digital advisory be designed around the way farmers actually learn and make decisions?
Join Spindle Design, agritech practitioners, agricultural finance organisations and researchers for a practical conversation about what it takes to move from delivering messages to enabling action on the farm.
What you will walk away with
1. A clearer picture of why farmer adoption stalls, the specific trust barriers and the design shifts that address them.
2. A framework for evaluating whether your tool fits into how smallholder farmers seek information and make decisions.
3. Hear from practitioners who have navigated adoption challenges - what they built, what failed, and what changed when they designed with farmers rather than for them.
About Spindle Design
Spindle Design is a research, design and digital innovation firm working across Africa.
In agriculture and climate, Spindle helps organisations design products and programmes that work for the farmers they serve. Our work is grounded in research, giving organisations the contextual understanding they need to build solutions that farmers trust and adopt.