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SEARCA Research Desk
AFNR Knowledge Platform
Published
29/09/2026AFNR Knowledge Watch
Issue No. 6
igital extension and advisory services can expand how agricultural information reaches farmers, but service availability alone does not show whether they are working.
A more useful test is whether smallholders can access, use, apply, and benefit from the information and advice provided.
An earlier AFNR Knowledge Watch brief, Issue No. 3, examined digital agriculture broadly across advisory services, finance, markets, and the wider enabling ecosystem (SEARCA 2026). This brief narrows the lens to digital extension and advisory services.
Mobile phones, text and voice messaging, online platforms, and digital decision-support tools can complement conventional agricultural extension (FAO 2023). Yet these possibilities do not automatically translate into farmer-level benefits. A service may be available but difficult to access because of connectivity, device, or cost constraints. Farmers may receive information but not understand, trust, or use it. Advice may be consulted but not applied because capital or credit constraints, high input costs, perceived risk, or local conditions can make implementation difficult (ASEAN 2021; Jimenez and Sakurai 2026; Le et al. 2024). Even when recommendations are applied, improvements in productivity, income, resilience, or other outcomes still need to be demonstrated.
FAO identifies infrastructure and network coverage, device and information and communication technology (ICT) costs, weak regulatory frameworks, and limited institutional capacity and governance among the barriers affecting inclusive digital agricultural extension and advisory services (EAS). It also emphasizes complementary action among actors on both the supply and demand sides of digital EAS rather than technology provision alone (FAO 2023).
ASEAN regional guidance on digital technologies likewise emphasizes inclusive access, extension and capacity building, online-offline delivery, data security and interoperability (ASEAN 2021). The ASEAN Food, Agriculture and Forestry Sectoral Plan 2026–2030 places these issues within a wider regional agenda for innovation, resilience, and stakeholder cooperation (ASEAN Secretariat 2025).
Building on this framing, the brief examines digital EAS through a progression from availability and access to use, application, sustained use, and farmer-level outcomes. Progress at one stage does not ensure progress at the next.
The evidence reviewed here suggests that digital EAS works through, rather than apart from, the wider agricultural knowledge and innovation system (AKIS). Digital approaches can complement extension workers, farmer organizations, field demonstrations, and other advisory channels rather than being assumed to replace them. Southeast Asian evidence also provides reasons to examine blended models in which digital and human support perform complementary functions. (ASEAN 2021; FAO 2023; Goeb et al. 2025; Jimenez and Sakurai 2026)
Recent 2025–2026 studies in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Myanmar sharpen this question by examining extension-worker performance, farmer capacity and resilience, and digital-only versus lead-farmer-supported delivery (Goeb et al. 2025; Jimenez and Sakurai 2026; Mursalat et al. 2026). The empirical evidence reviewed comes primarily from Cambodia, Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Vietnam and spans different commodities, advisory channels, study designs, and stages of digital-service use. The brief therefore identifies regional signals and design questions rather than estimating Southeast Asia-wide effects.
What conditions enable digital extension and advisory services to move from availability and access to meaningful use, application, sustained use, and measurable benefits for Southeast Asian smallholders?
Progress from digital provision to farmer benefit depends on what happens at each stage from availability and access to use, application, sustained use, and outcomes.
Availability concerns whether an appropriate service exists and can technically reach farmers. Access concerns whether farmers have the connectivity, devices, electricity, affordability, and other conditions needed to receive it. Use concerns whether farmers engage with the service and can understand and make sense of its information. Application concerns whether that information influences an actual farm decision or practice. Sustained use concerns whether farmers continue to use the service across relevant seasons or decisions when continued use is appropriate. Outcomes concern whether those changes are associated with measurable effects on productivity, income, resilience, resource use, risk management, or other farmer objectives. This is a diagnostic framework rather than a rigid causal ladder. Some advisory services, such as time-specific pest or weather alerts, may be valuable without requiring continuous use.
This is a diagnostic framework rather than a rigid causal ladder. Some advisory services, such as time-specific pest or weather alerts, may be valuable without requiring continuous use.
Not every digital service must directly generate measurable farm outcomes. Some may primarily improve information access, communication with extension workers, or the timeliness of advice. The progression instead helps distinguish service delivery from farmer response and demonstrated benefit. Registrations, downloads, messages sent, and users reached can indicate scale, but not whether farmers understood the information, acted on it, or experienced improved outcomes.
1
A digital service can be available without being meaningfully accessible to farmers or extension providers.
Digital EAS depends partly on infrastructure and affordability, but regional evidence suggests that access constraints extend beyond connectivity. (ASEAN 2021; Le et al. 2024; Purwadi, Firmansyah, and Nurjanah 2024; Suswadi and Irawan 2023)
Purwadi, Firmansyah, and Nurjanah (2024) surveyed 340 independent oil palm farmers in East Kotawaringin, Paser, Sekadau, and Central Mamuju, Indonesia. Educational level was positively related to smartphone ownership, while age was inversely related to it. Farmers in locations with farmer groups also received more conventional extension and had opportunities to learn about available digital extension materials.
These findings concern oil palm farmers in four locations and should not be generalized to Indonesian agriculture as a whole. They nevertheless illustrate how education, device access, farmer organization, and existing extension relationships can shape practical access.
Access constraints can also occur on the provider side. Suswadi and Irawan (2023) found that not all agricultural extension workers in Indonesia understood the use of cyber-extension tools. Their Structural Equation Modeling with Partial Least Squares (SEM-PLS) analysis found that individual motivation, social capital, digital extension adoption, and knowledge sharing were positively and significantly associated with extension performance. The study does not demonstrate effects on farmer-level outcomes.
Conditions also vary among countries. Le et al. (2024), studying 937 farmers in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, found that barriers and enabling factors differed across the three settings. Access constraints—and solutions—should therefore not be assumed to be uniform across Southeast Asia.
Are digital services being accompanied by the connectivity, affordability, farmer capacity, extension worker capacity, and institutional support needed for meaningful access?
2
Access matters, but farmers still need to understand, trust, and find value in the information a digital service provides. (Le et al. 2024; Luu and Le 2025)
Using the Theory of Planned Behavior framework and structural equation modeling, Le et al. (2024) found significant positive relationships between uptake of digital extension services and subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, and perceived usefulness among farmers in Cambodia, the Philippines, and Vietnam. Household wealth and perceived risks were also associated with adoption.
Understanding is another consideration. Luu and Le (2025), writing in the Asian Journal of Agriculture and Development, surveyed 230 farming households in Vietnam’s Red River Delta. Using a 35-item questionnaire, they reported an average digital awareness score of 15.8 out of 35. Educational attainment, farm type, internet proficiency, participation in digital transformation training, visits to pilot models, and land size were among the factors associated with farmers’ level of understanding.
The study concerns understanding of agricultural digital transformation rather than comprehension of a particular digital extension message. It nevertheless shows why access indicators cannot be assumed to represent effective engagement. Language, usability, skills, perceived usefulness, trust, and opportunities to seek clarification can influence whether an available service becomes a useful advisory channel. (ASEAN 2021; Goeb et al. 2025; Le et al. 2024; Purwadi, Firmansyah, and Nurjanah 2024)
More direct evidence on digital adoption comes from Uy et al. (2025), who surveyed 455 smallholders in Quang Tri Province, Vietnam. Education, farm size, digital experience, knowledge exchange frequency, access to digital information, and internet costs were among the factors significantly associated with digital technology adoption. The study concerns digital technology adoption broadly rather than a single digital advisory service, but it reinforces the importance of farmer capabilities, information access, and cost in digital agricultural extension strategies.
Once farmers can access a digital service, can they understand it, judge its relevance, and use it with sufficient confidence?
3
Using a digital service does not necessarily mean that its advice changes farm decisions or practices.
Farmers may receive an advisory, consult an application, or interact with a platform without changing a decision. Recommendations may be difficult to implement because of capital or credit constraints, high costs, perceived risk, or incompatibility with local conditions (ASEAN 2021; Jimenez and Sakurai 2026; Le et al. 2024).
Recent Philippine evidence on Rice Crop Manager (RCM) illustrates this distinction. RCM is a digital decision-support tool that provides field-specific recommendations for rice production, including site-specific nutrient management.
Jimenez and Sakurai (2026) studied 415 rice farmers and 30 agricultural extension workers (AEWs) in Nueva Ecija and Isabela. Using multilevel regression with a control-function approach, they found that AEW job performance had a positive and significant effect on technology adoption of RCM and its site-specific nutrient management component. Farming experience, training attendance, credit access, regular extension visits, and distance to the extension office also significantly influenced uptake.
The findings shift attention from whether recommendations are available to whether promoted technologies are actually taken up. They also point to the importance of the human extension system surrounding a digital tool. The study, however, examines adoption rather than subsequent effects on yield, income, or resilience. It therefore provides evidence on application, not on farmer-level impact.
Are evaluations examining whether farmers act on digital advice, and what enables or prevents that transition from information to practice?
4
Some Southeast Asian studies move beyond access and uptake, but they measure different types of outcomes and provide different strengths of evidence.
An Indonesian study provides evidence on relationships that may be relevant after farmers are already using digital advisory channels. Mursalat et al. (2026) surveyed 396 farmers in Sidenreng Rappang Regency, South Sulawesi, who had used at least one ICT-based platform—such as WhatsApp groups, YouTube, digital extension services, or agricultural applications—for farming-related decision-making during the previous six months.
Using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), the study found positive relationships between farmers’ perceptions of five innovation attributes and farmer capacity. Farmer capacity was positively associated with agricultural resilience and statistically mediated the relationships between perceived innovation attributes and resilience.
These findings identify relationships among digital innovation attributes, farmer capacity, and resilience among existing digital platform users. They do not demonstrate that digital advisory services caused improvements in resilience. The study uses cross-sectional data, and the authors note the need for longitudinal research to establish temporal relationships more clearly (Mursalat et al. 2026).
Stronger causal evidence comes from a randomized controlled trial in Myanmar. Goeb et al. (2025) compared direct short message service (SMS) delivery with a hybrid approach combining SMS with lead-farmer support to provide fall armyworm management information to maize farmers. The final analytical sample covered 1,114 households in 61 villages across nine townships in southern Shan and northern Kayah states.
Both approaches improved farmer knowledge. The authors also report suggestive evidence that the lead-farmer-supported group spent more on pesticides and hired labor than the control group and used pesticides more effectively in controlling damage than the SMS-only group. The evidence is therefore stronger for knowledge gains than for broader behavioral or livelihood effects.
Taken together, these studies do not establish that digital EAS consistently improves productivity, income, resilience, or other farmer-level outcomes across Southeast Asia. The evidence reviewed remains stronger on access, uptake, understanding, and application than on sustained and independently verified outcomes.
Where benefits are reported, what outcomes are actually being measured, and can those outcomes be linked to digital EAS?
5
Digital and human advisory channels may contribute differently to how agricultural information is delivered, interpreted, and applied.
Taken together, the evidence suggests that the key design question is not whether digital or human channels are inherently superior, but which advisory functions each can perform effectively and under what conditions.
Farmers already obtain information from extension workers, other farmers, cooperatives, research institutions, input suppliers, traders, media, and family and community networks. Digital EAS enters this existing knowledge system rather than operating separately from it.
Digital tools may be well suited to distributing information quickly and repeatedly across distance. SMS and other mobile channels can support alerts, reminders, basic recommendations, or communication where frequent physical visits are difficult. Other advisory functions—such as diagnosis, demonstrations, clarification, local interpretation, and links to inputs or services—may require greater interaction. (ASEAN 2021; Goeb et al. 2025; Manalo and van de Fliert 2011)
Philippine evidence reinforces the continuing role of frontline extension personnel. Jimenez and Sakurai (2026) found that AEW job performance significantly affected technology adoption, while regular extension visits were also among the significant farmer-level factors. The evidence does not show that human support must accompany every digital service, but it provides a reason to examine extension-worker capacity and working conditions when digital tools are embedded in public advisory systems.
Earlier Philippine work by Manalo and van de Fliert (2011) argued for technological hybrids, critical evaluation of ICT interventions, and greater farmer participation in design and evaluation. Although the technological context has changed substantially, its questions about participation, intermediaries, and combinations of communication channels remain relevant.
The Myanmar experiment provides a more recent test of different delivery arrangements. Direct SMS and lead-farmer-supported SMS both improved knowledge, while the hybrid treatment produced suggestive evidence of some additional behavioral effects (Goeb et al. 2025). This does not establish that hybrid delivery is universally superior, but it indicates that the way digital information is connected to local intermediaries can influence farmer response.
A blended model could therefore take different forms: extension personnel might use digital decision-support tools during face-to-face work; digital messages might be followed by field support where diagnosis or demonstration is needed; and farmer groups or voice services might help relay or interpret information. (ASEAN 2021; Goeb et al. 2025; Manalo and van de Fliert 2011)
The appropriate combination will depend on the advisory task, farmer needs, institutional capacity, infrastructure, and cost. Hybrid extension is best treated as a design option to test rather than a model to prescribe uniformly.
Which advisory functions can digital channels perform effectively on their own, and where does human or community-based support add measurable value?
The evidence reviewed supports cautious conclusions about the role of digital EAS in Southeast Asia.
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The studies reviewed provide more evidence on access, uptake, understanding, and application than on sustained use and farmer-level outcomes.
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Survey and structural-equation findings identify relationships but do not by themselves demonstrate that digital EAS caused changes in farm practices or outcomes (Le et al. 2024; Luu and Le 2025; Mursalat et al. 2026).
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Jimenez and Sakurai (2026) examine technology uptake and AEW performance; they do not estimate effects on yield or income.
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Mursalat et al. (2026) analyze perceived innovation attributes, farmer capacity, and resilience among existing digital advisory users using cross-sectional data.
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Behavioral findings from the lead-farmer-supported treatment are characterized by the authors as suggestive, and broader livelihood effects are not established (Goeb et al. 2025).
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Indonesian oil palm farmers, Vietnamese Red River Delta households, Philippine rice farmers, farmers in one Indonesian regency, and maize farmers in parts of Myanmar represent different production and institutional settings.
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The studies reviewed provide limited evidence on whether services retain users, remain technically and financially viable, and continue generating benefits over longer periods.
Future developments could help clarify whether digital EAS is moving farther along the pathway from service provision to farmer benefit.
1.
Are programs moving beyond reach and registration figures to measure message comprehension, decision change, verified application, continued use where relevant, and farmer outcomes?
2.
Do new comparative studies show when extension-worker, farmer-group, or lead-farmer support adds value to digital delivery, and at what additional cost?
3.
Are digital EAS investments accompanied by the skills, connectivity, incentives, manageable workloads, and institutional conditions needed by frontline personnel?
4.
Where do women, older farmers, poorer households, people with limited literacy, and remote communities drop out between access, use, application, sustained use, and benefit?
5.
How accurate, locally relevant, and understandable are emerging what trusted or domain-specific sources underpin their advice, and how are farmers and extension personnel actually using them (CGIAR 2025)?
6.
How are farmer data security, information exchange, and compatibility among public and private systems being addressed (ASEAN 2021)?
7.
What evidence emerges on recurrent financing, content updating, technical maintenance, user support, and engagement after project funding ends?
The evidence points to a clear policy implication: farm size can help identify and describe producers, but it should not determine smallholder policy on its own. For Southeast Asia, the more useful question is how farms at different scales contribute to production, livelihoods, markets, and food systems—and what conditions enable smaller producers to participate effectively, inclusively, and sustainably.
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