In this Article
Introduction
In the rugged highlands of Papua New Guinea, Maria tends to her coffee trees with the same care her grandmother taught her decades ago. Yet despite generations of farming wisdom, she struggles with falling yields, unpredictable weather patterns, and limited access to markets that could transform her family's livelihood. Maria's story echoes across PNG, where over 80% of the population depends on smallholder farming, but traditional extension services reach less than 5% of farmers.
The digital revolution offers unprecedented potential to bridge this gap. With mobile phone penetration rapidly expanding even in remote valleys, digital agriculture advisory services could finally connect farmers like Maria to the knowledge, markets, and support they need. However, the promise of digital agriculture will only be realized if these solutions are designed with farmers at the center—not as passive recipients of technology, but as active partners in creating tools that truly serve their needs.
The Reality of PNG's Agricultural Landscape
Papua New Guinea's agricultural sector presents unique challenges that demand innovative solutions. The country's mountainous terrain fragments farming communities across thousands of islands and valleys, making traditional face-to-face extension services logistically difficult and prohibitively expensive. A single extension officer might be responsible for farmers spread across hundreds of kilometers of difficult terrain.
This geographic isolation compounds other challenges. Farmers often lack access to timely weather information, market prices, or technical advice on crop management. When pest outbreaks occur or diseases threaten crops, farmers may have no immediate recourse to expert guidance. The result is a persistent productivity gap—PNG's agricultural yields remain well below potential, despite favorable growing conditions for many crops.
Women farmers face additional barriers. Despite making up a significant portion of agricultural workers, they often have limited access to training, credit, and market information. Traditional extension approaches may inadvertently exclude women by timing sessions during their domestic responsibilities or conducting meetings in male-dominated spaces.
Understanding Farmer-Centric Design
Farmer-centric design fundamentally shifts how we approach agricultural technology development. Instead of creating solutions in isolation and hoping farmers will adopt them, this approach starts with deep understanding of farmers' daily realities, constraints, and aspirations.
In PNG's context, this means recognizing that farmers are not a homogeneous group. A coffee grower in the Western Highlands has different information needs than a cocoa farmer in East New Britain. Subsistence farmers growing sweet potato may require different types of support than those cultivating cash crops for export. Effective digital advisory services must account for these diverse contexts.
Language represents another critical consideration. PNG is home to over 800 languages, making content localization essential for widespread adoption. Services that only operate in English or Tok Pisin may inadvertently exclude communities that prefer their local languages for technical information.
The design process must also consider farmers' existing information-seeking behaviors. Many PNG farmers already rely on informal networks—conversations with neighbors, observations of successful farmers, or advice from community leaders. Digital services should complement and strengthen these existing networks rather than attempting to replace them entirely.
Building Inclusive Digital Advisory Services
Creating truly inclusive digital advisory services requires deliberate design choices that ensure accessibility across different groups and contexts. This inclusivity must address multiple dimensions simultaneously.
Technology Access and Literacy
Not all farmers have smartphones or reliable internet connections. Effective services must work across a range of devices and connectivity levels. SMS-based services can reach basic phones, while interactive voice response (IVR) systems can serve farmers with limited literacy. For those with smartphones, apps should function with intermittent connectivity and be designed for low-data usage.
Consider the example of a weather advisory service. For farmers with smartphones, detailed forecasts with maps and charts provide valuable insights. But the same information can be condensed into SMS messages for basic phones: "Rain expected tomorrow. Delay spraying. Apply fungicide after 2 days dry weather."
Gender and Social Inclusion
Women farmers often have different information needs and face distinct constraints in accessing digital services. They may have less control over household mobile phones or limited time to attend training sessions. Inclusive services might send targeted messages during times when women are more likely to access phones, or partner with women's groups for peer-to-peer learning.
Youth represent another important demographic. Young farmers may be more comfortable with digital technologies but might need different types of support—perhaps focusing on modern farming techniques, business planning, or connecting with markets for value-added products.
Content and Communication Design
Information must be not only accessible but also actionable. Farmers need advice they can implement with available resources. Recommendations that require expensive inputs or equipment beyond farmers' means will quickly erode trust in the service.
Effective advisory messages are:
- Timely: Delivered when farmers can act on the information
- Specific: Tailored to local crops, conditions, and farming systems
- Practical: Achievable with available resources and skills
- Trusted: Coming from credible sources that farmers recognize
Practical Applications for PNG Agriculture
Digital advisory services can address multiple challenges simultaneously when designed thoughtfully. Here are key application areas particularly relevant to PNG:
Crop Management and Extension
Digital platforms can deliver timely advice on planting schedules, fertilizer application, pest identification, and disease management. For coffee farmers, this might include alerts about coffee berry borer outbreaks with specific guidance on organic control methods. Cocoa growers could receive step-by-step instructions for proper fermentation techniques that improve bean quality and market prices.
Interactive features allow farmers to submit photos of plant problems for diagnosis, creating two-way communication channels that traditional extension services often lack. Community features enable farmers to share experiences and learn from each other's successes and challenges.
Market Information and Linkages
Access to market information can dramatically improve farmers' bargaining power and income. Digital platforms can provide real-time price information for different markets, helping farmers decide when and where to sell their crops. For perishable crops like vegetables, this information becomes particularly valuable.
Beyond prices, digital services can facilitate direct connections between farmers and buyers, reducing the number of intermediaries and improving profit margins. A coconut farmer in a remote area might connect directly with a copra buyer, eliminating several middlemen and increasing their income substantially.
Financial Services and Digital Payments
Many PNG farmers lack access to formal banking services, limiting their ability to save money, access credit, or make secure transactions. Digital financial services integrated with agricultural platforms can address these gaps. Farmers might receive payments directly to mobile wallets, accumulate savings through micro-deposit features, or access credit based on their production and sales history.
Financial literacy components help farmers understand budgeting, record-keeping, and investment decisions. Simple tools for tracking farm expenses and income can reveal insights that improve farm profitability.
Climate Information and Adaptation
Climate change poses increasing risks to PNG agriculture. Digital services can provide early warning systems for extreme weather events, helping farmers protect crops and livestock. Seasonal forecasts help with planting decisions, while longer-term climate projections support adaptation planning.
Farmers can access information about climate-resilient crop varieties, water conservation techniques, and sustainable farming practices that build resilience while maintaining productivity.
Implementation Strategies for Success
Successful implementation of inclusive digital advisory services requires careful attention to multiple factors:
Partnership and Collaboration
No single organization can address all aspects of inclusive digital agriculture. Effective initiatives bring together technology providers, agricultural experts, telecommunications companies, financial service providers, and farmer organizations. Government agencies play crucial roles in policy support and coordination.
Local partnerships are particularly important. Community-based organizations, churches, and traditional leaders can help build trust and facilitate adoption. Extension officers can serve as bridges between digital services and farmers, providing face-to-face support when needed.
Pilot Testing and Iteration
Services should be developed through iterative cycles of design, testing, and refinement. Small-scale pilots with diverse farmer groups reveal usability issues, content gaps, and adoption barriers before full-scale deployment. This approach reduces risks and improves outcomes.
Pilots should deliberately include marginalized groups to ensure services work for all intended users. Feedback mechanisms must capture not just what farmers like, but what they find confusing, irrelevant, or inaccessible.
Sustainable Business Models
Long-term sustainability requires viable business models that don't rely indefinitely on donor funding. Fee-for-service models work for some applications, while others might be supported by agribusiness partnerships or government contracts. Cross-subsidization allows premium services to support basic services for low-income farmers.
The key is ensuring that sustainability mechanisms don't compromise accessibility or effectiveness for the most vulnerable farmers.
Ending Note
The transformation of PNG's agricultural sector through inclusive digital advisory services represents both an unprecedented opportunity and a significant responsibility. Technology alone cannot solve the complex challenges facing smallholder farmers, but thoughtfully designed digital solutions can amplify existing strengths while addressing critical gaps in information, markets, and support services.
Success requires moving beyond the assumption that farmers will simply adapt to whatever technology is offered. Instead, we must start with farmers' needs, constraints, and aspirations, then design technology that serves those realities. This farmer-centric approach, combined with deliberate attention to inclusion and accessibility, can ensure that digital agriculture becomes a force for reducing rather than widening inequality.
For farmers like Maria in the highlands, inclusive digital advisory services could mean the difference between struggling with traditional challenges and thriving in a connected, supported agricultural ecosystem. The opportunity is clear—now we must ensure that our designs live up to the promise, creating agricultural transformation that truly works for every farmer in Papua New Guinea.
The path forward requires sustained commitment to inclusive design principles, strong partnerships across sectors, and the humility to listen to farmers as the true experts in their own contexts. When we get this right, digital agriculture can become the bridge that finally connects PNG's farmers to the knowledge, markets, and opportunities they need to build prosperous and resilient livelihoods.
GlenH - Oct 1, 2025gghayoge at gmail.com