Improving Smallholder Farmers’ Livelihoods through Mobile Phone-Based Agricultural Advice

The majority of the world’s 450 million smallholder farmers and the 2 billion people who depend on them live in rural villages in developing countries, growing crops at close to subsistence levels to feed their families. Small changes in agricultural practices can substantially improve productivity and profitability, but farmers continue to lack the advice they need to close the yield gap and maximize their incomes. However, mobile phone ownership and access to mobile phones are increasing in developing countries, presenting a huge opportunity to provide digital agricultural advisory services. Today on CID’s Speaker Series podcast, Jason Keene, student at the Harvard Kennedy School, interviews Jonathan Lehe, Director of New Programs at Precision Agriculture for Development, who discusses how PAD is working to improve the lives of farmers in developing countries. www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/cid Interview recorded on April 5, 2019. About Jonathan Lehe: Jonathan Lehe is PAD's Global Research Manager. Mr. Lehe holds a Masters in Public Administration in International Development (MPA/ID) from the Harvard Kennedy School. He has more than 10 years of experience in the global health and education sectors, managing research projects and implementation of programs to scale up access to critical public services in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. He has previously worked at the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and consulted for the World Bank, Bridge International Academies, and MIT's Jameel Poverty Action Lab. View the transcript for this episode here: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/cid/files/Transcripts/Transcript-Improving%20Smallholder%20Farmers.pdf

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Incredible progress has been made throughout the world in recent years. However, globalization has failed to deliver on its promises. As problems like unequal access to education and healthcare, environmental degradation, and stretched finances persist, we must continue building on decades of transformative development work. The Center for International Development (CID) is a university-wide center based at the Harvard Kennedy School that seeks to solve these pressing development problems—and many more. At CID, we believe leveraging global talent is the key to enabling development for all. We teach to build capacity, conduct research that guides development policy, and convene talent to advance ideas for a thriving world. Addressing today’s challenges to international development also requires bridging academic expertise with practitioner experience. Through collaborative, in-country partnerships, CID’s research programs, faculty, and students deploy an analytical framework and context-dependent approaches to tackle development problems from all angles, in every region of the globe.