Innovation at PxD: Identifying the next generation of cost-effective services that can transform farmer impact at scale
The potential of AI
PxD is excited about the potential of AI to push the boundaries of agricultural advice, including by improving our content, targeting, and delivery, so that smallholder farmers benefit from timely, localized, and highly relevant information. We are also excited about using AI to improve our internal capabilities.
In 2024, we developed in-house capabilities to build a bot that leverages generative AI to interrogate our research and experiment registry data. The bot allowed us to synthesize several years of learnings on effectively delivering digital agriculture services. We hope to make this tool public in 2025.
As part of our traditional voice services, agronomists have manually drafted multiple advisories for every fluctuation in weather, pests, or market conditions for each farmer’s location—a time-intensive process that limits scalability.
To meet this challenge, we are developing AI-powered solutions using large language models to generate tailored advisories in real time. We aim to synthesize static and dynamic data—integrating Earth Observation insights, remote sensing, and farmer inputs—to produce precise, actionable recommendations within seconds. By automating and personalizing agricultural guidance at scale, we can rapidly generate multiple customized-message advisory variations, translate them into local languages, and convert them into a variety of required formats—including voice or text messages for the calls or texts that ensure accessibility for all farmers. Crucially, this approach also allows us to reach farmers directly where they are, by proactively sending AI-enhanced advice without using an intermediary such as a government extension worker.
In 2025, we will pilot this approach with coffee farmers in India. Early insights will help us refine this initiative and expand it to additional value chains and geographies. By transforming how smallholder farmers receive and act on critical advice, PxD will contribute to farmers ultimately improving their productivity, incomes, and resilience in an increasingly unpredictable climate.
Boosting farmers’ resilience to climate change
Scaling the adoption of climate resilient seeds in India
PxD is working in India to scale the adoption of new stress-tolerant seed varieties that help farmers to cope with climate shocks. Previous work shows that, while digital advisory can improve the adoption of these seeds, the availability of seed remains a key barrier. In 2024, we began a pilot study to test whether promoting newly available wilt-tolerant chickpea seeds to agro-dealers accelerates the local availability of the seeds. Evidence from Dar et al. (2023) shows that distributing trial seed packets to local input suppliers addresses adoption barriers by influencing future stocking decisions of the input suppliers. PxD’s digital advisory will encourage experimentation and learning among agro-dealers who receive the trial seed packets distributed by a private sector seed distribution partner using their existing transportation network. This pilot work can be scaled to major chickpea-growing regions in the country, and can provide scaling models for similar new technologies by catalyzing supply-side transformation.
Optimizing fertilizer use for cotton farmers, benefiting both farmers and the climate
Leaf Colour Charts (LCCs) are a low-cost, user-friendly decision support tool to help farmers assess plants’ nitrogen needs and optimize fertilizer use. The charts have the potential to boost profits, reduce the need for input subsidies, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions resulting from excess nitrogen fertilizer application. Based on empirical evidence (Islam and Beg, 2020) and the promising findings from PxD pilot studies, in 2024 PxD continued to test scaling models for LCC-use among cotton farmers in Maharashtra, and we supplemented the LCCs with digital advisory. We also began a randomized evaluation to generate rigorous estimates of the impacts on the profitability for farmers. In 2025 we will begin endline data collection for the evaluation, and will expand our scaling efforts to rice farmers.
Scaling Asset-Collateralized Loans (ACLs) to dairy farmers in Kenya
ACLs are an innovative approach to reducing lending barriers, thus enabling farmers to secure loans by using the asset provided on credit (in this case, water tanks) as collateral. Supplying dairy farmers with water tanks has been shown to provide continued water access in droughts, increase households’ milk production, and improve school attendance among girls in these households, perhaps due to reduced time spent fetching water. The estimated discounted value of benefits from an ACL is estimated at $2,500 per household.
In 2024, we developed financial and operational models to support different dairies, and savings and credit cooperatives (SACCOs) in adopting this ACL innovation. We also built a pipeline of dairies and SACCOs that are well-positioned to roll out this innovation with limited technical assistance.
In 2025, we will roll out ACLs through a partnership with two of the largest SACCOs in Kenya. We estimate that we can reach a majority of dairy cooperative members with this innovation, through partnerships with just 10 to 20 SACCOs. This can generate large cost-effective impacts for tens of thousands of farmers across Kenya and beyond, and can translate into hundreds of millions of dollars of extra value earned by these small dairy farmers as a result of scaling the ACL innovation to these SACCOs.
“This tank has helped me in many ways. First, our cows produce more milk now. This is because in the past they’d have to walk to the river for water, where there are many cows struggling for water. Because of so many cows, they’d often not get enough water and even get injured by other cows. This water tank also provides water for our other livestock, and I use it to water my nursery beds of vegetable seedlings. I also use the water for our household needs like washing dishes and clothing. We have really benefited a lot from being able to store rainwater in this tank.”
Developing best practices in engaging smallholder farmers in carbon credits projects
PxD set out to improve the market’s understanding of how carbon credit projects should work with farmers to ensure adoption of the sustainable agriculture practices necessary for carbon outcomes. Key insights show that project co-benefits like productivity increases and access to agricultural services, which are additional benefits from a project beyond its GHG emissions outcomes, are farmers’ primary motivation for project participation, rather than cash incentives from carbon credit revenue sharing. Data on project activities that generate co-benefits and data on ultimate farmer outcomes, like farmer yield or profitability, provide crucial information on whether or not the project is successfully engaging with farmers to achieve its GHG emissions outcomes—and is truly benefiting farmers. One avenue to implement this could be designing measurement, reporting, and verification systems that incorporate co-benefit measurement alongside carbon outcomes measurement.
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