CEO Diaries: Six Months of Wins, Challenges, and Growth
Since stepping into the role of CEO at PxD in April, the past six months have been a whirlwind – challenging, rewarding and full of momentum. As I reflect on all the things we’ve accomplished …
Team PxD
A data driven, evidence-based and user-centered approach
Improving Ethiopian smallholder farmers’ productivity and resilience via farmer hotline: Learnings from a data-driven and evidence-based collaboration with the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute This blog extracts some key insights from a working paper entitled “Using …
Customized Weather Forecasts for Improved Farmer Decision Making
In our services for farmers, PxD aims to provide timely, relevant, and actionable information to help them make better decisions. In this post, we reflect on our efforts to design a customized weather forecast product …
10 Million Users Reached in the Last 12 Months!
All of us at Precision Development (PxD) are delighted to report that in 2023 we achieved a major milestone – digital agriculture platforms built or improved by PxD reached more than 10 million users in …
Creating a Global South Inclusive Carbon Dioxide Removal Marketplace: Enhanced Rock Weathering as a Lens
Following PxD’s initiative identifying evidence-based climate change mitigation opportunities for smallholder farmers in the Global South, we are exploring ways to advance these opportunities in credible, inclusive, and equitable ways. This article is the first …
Welcoming New Members and Transitions
Precision Development (PxD) is delighted to announce that Amrita Ahuja has taken on the role of Board Chair, and the appointment of Jinu Koola to our Board. We welcome Amrita Sabnavis as a non-board member …
Innovative financing to bring clean water to drought-stricken Kenyan dairy farmers
Dairy farmers in Kenya are being hit hard by climate change. The country is seeing increased droughts, and, with dry spells projected to increase up to 27% in severity and heat waves likely to increase …
Embracing equity: Reflecting on PxD’s progress on gender and the way ahead
The streets of Mexico City are filled with purple with tens of thousands of women, old and young, who march side by side. They wear purple to highlight the challenges women still face in Mexico. …
Research in Review: 2022
2022 was a tremendous leap forward for research at PxD. Our research and operations teams completed a total of eight A/B test experiments and impact evaluations. We collected data in person and over the phone …
Making markets for carbon: can smallholder farmers benefit from investments to cut climate change?
Paying people for actions that contribute to climate change mitigation, known as payment for ecosystem services (PES), has the potential to address both environmental and poverty alleviation goals. For example, there is a strong history …
Letter from Lahore – February 2023
Punjab means “five rivers”, and those five rivers are the reason that the Punjab region in Pakistan is the country’s bread basket. Tomoko and I were in Punjab last week visiting the PxD Pakistan country …
New Report: Exploring private sector collaboration to fund free digital extension for smallholder farmers
A new PxD report details fee-for-service private sector collaboration to support free digital extension service delivery to farmers in poverty With support from the Swiss Re Foundation, PxD investigated the viability of new forms of …
Disease, Heat, and Floods: Using digital services to mitigate new challenges to women’s livelihoods in rural Pakistan
When disease and a heatwave, followed by devastating floods ravaged Pakistan’s Punjab province, PxD’s LMAFRP digital information service, which we implement in partnership with the Rural Community Development Society (RCDS) with support from the International …
New possibilities for value-added agricultural advisory services through data sharing and integration
Agricultural livelihoods predominate among the rural population of Ethiopia to such an extent that agriculture makes up 32.5% of the country’s GDP (2020/21) and accounts for 63.5% of employment (2021). Despite the importance of the …
Information for adaptation: Assisting Kenyan farmers on the frontline of climate change
From confronting cataclysmic floods in Pakistan, to biblical pest infestations in east Africa, smallholder farmers are on the frontline of an escalating climate crisis. Poor farmers, whose livelihoods disproportionately depend on rainfed agriculture, are particularly …
Q2 2022: Progress Report!
We are pleased to present our second progress report for 2022, with programmatic and organizational updates for the period spanning 1 April to 30 June. Please write to communications@precisiondev.org for more information or to explore …
Befriending the farmer: Reflections on building and transitioning the Ama Krushi service
On 1 August 2022, PxD completed the transition of the management and operations of Ama Krushi – our largest digital service – to Tatwa Technologies Limited, a third-party firm that won a competitive government tender. …
IFAD story about our partnership in Pakistan
Our partner and funder, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), has published a ‘story’ on their website about our collaboration to deliver much-needed digital information to Pakistani smallholder farming families to promote resilience during …
Reading the coffee grounds: A landscape analysis of challenges confronting Indian coffee growers
Precision Development (PxD) has completed a landscape analysis to more systematically understand the challenges faced by users of the Coffee Krishi Taranga (CKT) service, with a focus on three core areas, namely, sustainability, market linkages, …
Taking advice: Speaking to farmers to inform more effective services
Precision Development (PxD) leverages needs assessment research to inform our agricultural extension services, and we survey our farmers to gauge their opinion of our services. Sourcing information from farmers gives us direct insight into the …