One important constraint to farmers’ adoption of digital technologies, beyond costs, relevance, user-friendliness, human capital requirements, and perceived technology risks, is farmers’ lack of trust in digital technologies. A number of issues underlie this lack of trust: 1) problems of data privacy, security, and confidence in data sharing; 2) cases of misaligned incentives of sellers and buyers of digital technologies; 3) difficulty in learning how to unwrap “black box” technologies; and 4) lack of standards for comparing and certifying the operation of digital technologies. Governments have several potential options to help bridge these trust gaps. These include encouraging firms to decouple their sales of problem assessment from sales of solutions; strengthening public sector extension services and farmers’ technological learning; facilitating the development of risk-sharing arrangements between technology providers and farmers; and exploring ways to promote the standardisation of evaluation and certification of digital agricultural technologies.
Policies to bolster trust in agricultural digitalisation
Issues note
Policy paper
OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers
Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Abstract
In the same series
-
Working paper23 October 2024
-
Working paper3 October 2024
-
Working paper22 August 2024
-
6 December 2023
Related publications
-
16 October 2024
-
6 December 2023
-
22 September 2023
-
11 July 2023