Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA.
Department of Economics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Science. 2019 Dec 13;366(6471). doi: 10.1126/science.aay3038.
The rapid spread of mobile phones creates potential for sustainably raising agricultural productivity for the 2 billion people living in smallholder farming households. Meta-analyses suggest that providing agricultural information via digital technologies increased yields by 4% and the odds of adopting recommended inputs by 22%. Benefits likely exceed the cost of information transmission by an order of magnitude. The spread of GPS-enabled smartphones could increase these benefits by enabling customized information, thus incentivizing farmers to contribute information to the system. Well-known distortions in markets for information limit the ability of such systems to reach the socially efficient scale through purely commercial means. There is a clear role for public support for digital agricultural extension, but messages designed by agricultural ministries are often difficult for farmers to understand and use. Realizing the potential of mobile communication systems requires feedback mechanisms to enable rigorous testing and continuous improvement.
手机的快速普及为 20 亿生活在小农家庭中的人提供了可持续提高农业生产力的潜力。元分析表明，通过数字技术提供农业信息将产量提高了 4%，并将推荐投入物的采用率提高了 22%。其收益很可能超过信息传输成本的一个数量级。GPS 功能智能手机的普及可以通过提供定制化信息来增加这些收益，从而激励农民向系统提供信息。信息市场中众所周知的扭曲限制了这些系统通过纯粹商业手段达到社会有效规模的能力。通过公共支持数字化农业推广具有明显的作用，但农业部设计的信息往往难以被农民理解和使用。要充分发挥移动通信系统的潜力，需要有反馈机制，以进行严格的测试和持续改进。
