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The global divide in data-driven farming

Nature Sustainability volume 4, pages 154–160 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Big data and mobile technology are widely claimed to be global disruptive forces in agriculture that benefit small-scale farmers. Yet the access of small-scale farmers to this technology is poorly understood. We show that only 24–37% of farms of <1 ha in size are served by third generation (3G) or 4G services, compared to 74–80% of farms of >200 ha in size. Furthermore, croplands with severe yield gaps, climate-stressed locations and food-insecure populations have poor service coverage. Across many countries in Africa, less than ~40% of farming households have Internet access, and the cost of data remains prohibitive. We recommend a digital inclusion agenda whereby governments, the development community and the private sector focus their efforts to improve access so that data-driven agriculture is available to all farmers globally.

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Fig. 1: The coverage of mobile services across global croplands.
Fig. 2: Mobile phone ownership and Internet access in farming households.
Fig. 3: The cost of mobile data for the poorest 10% of people.

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Data availability

The data sets used and created in this study are archived at the Zenodo Public Repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4082121.

Code availability

All code for reproducing the results in this manuscript are archived at the Zenodo Public Repository: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4082121.

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Acknowledgements

Z.M. and N.R. were funded by NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN-2017–04648. Z.M., H.W., V.R. and N.R. were funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Insight Grant 435-2015-1364, and H.W. by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research grant ROH-115207. Z.M. and H.W. received funds from the VPRI Research Excellence Cluster on Diversified Agroecosystems of the University of British Columbia. C.L. was funded by the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme of the Euroipean Union under Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement 796451. This work was implemented as part of the CGIAR Platform for Big Data in Agriculture, which is carried out with support from CGIAR Fund Donors and through bilateral funding agreements. For details, please visit https://www.cgiar.org/funders/.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. The UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Zia Mehrabi, Vincent Ricciardi, Christian Levers, Juan Diego Martinez & Navin Ramankutty

  2. Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Zia Mehrabi, Vincent Ricciardi, Christian Levers, Juan Diego Martinez, Hannah Wittman & Navin Ramankutty

  3. Center for Sustainable Food Systems, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Zia Mehrabi, Mollie J. McDowell & Hannah Wittman

  4. Department of Computational Landscape Ecology, Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research - UFZ, Leipzig, Germany

    Christian Levers

  5. Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Natascha Mehrabi

  6. CGIAR Research Program on Big Data in Agriculture, International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Cali, Colombia

    Andy Jarvis

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  1. Zia Mehrabi
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  2. Mollie J. McDowell
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Contributions

Z.M. conceived, designed and led the study. N.M. helped with concept development. Z.M., H.W., N.R. and A.J. helped to secure funding. M.J.M., V.R., C.L. and J.D.M. compiled and developed the underlying data sets. Z.M. conducted the analysis and wrote the paper. All authors provided comments on the paper.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zia Mehrabi.

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Mehrabi, Z., McDowell, M.J., Ricciardi, V. et al. The global divide in data-driven farming. Nat Sustain 4, 154–160 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00631-0

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