How Are Smallholder Farmers Involved in Digital Agriculture in Developing Countries: A Case Study from China | Land Portal

Resource information

Date of publication: 
March 2021
Resource Language: 
ISBN / Resource ID: 
10.3390/land10030245
License of the resource: 
Copyright details: 
© 2021 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article.

Digital transformation in agricultural practices may lead to a "digital divide" between small and large farms, owing to the characteristics and availability of digital technology. This paper sought to use a case study in Chongzhou County, Sichuan Province in China, to analyze how smallholder farmers in developing countries access such digital agriculture and share the benefits of digital agricultural transformation. Small farmers may own a larger scale farm through forming cooperatives; they are also indirectly involved in digital agriculture through agriculture outsourcing. The outsourcing market is expected to grow, which will allow for the evolution of a digital agricultural service platform, the development of a digital agricultural business organization consortium, and the continued expansion of a healthy digital ecology. This paper revealed important policy implications, stemming from the fact that the implementation of inclusive digital agriculture relies on two key shifts: (1) transformation from land scale operations to service scale operations and (2) from inclusive technological progress to inclusive organization innovation.

Authors and Publishers

Author(s), editor(s), contributor(s): 

Xie, Lin
Luo, Biliang
Zhong, Wenjing

Publisher(s): 

Data provider

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