Accelerating sustainable agriculture by leveraging the power of human-centered design and technology
A Use Case to improve water quality in farming
— co-written with Michelle Ten Pas
Challenging agribusinesses to be more sustainable
When acknowledging the impact of overconsumption on the planet, it is hard to disregard the impact of farming and agriculture. Industrialized farming made it possible for humans to produce and access large quantities of food at low cost. However, it has come at a cost to the people, the society and the environment, including negative effects on the water quality, air, soil, animals, and forming a threat for biodiversity as well as increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Merely looking at GHG emissions, agriculture, forestry, and land use produce a total of 18,4% of global emissions, with 10,3% directly linked to agriculture (Hannah Ritchie and Max Roser, 2023) (Figure 1).
Besides GHG emissions, agriculture also causes other forms of pollution from many different sources that harm the environment. For example, nitrogen-based fertilizers produce potent greenhouse gases and can leach dangerous pollutants into waterways (Courtney Lindwall, 2022) threatening our biodiversity. This is just one of the many examples of how the excessive usage of such fertilizers can affect the environment. To tackle these kinds of challenges, we believe that small changes in the behavior of farmers can have a major impact. Leveraging the power of technology combined with human-centric design, we can stimulate farmers to reduce their environmental impact, such as the one of fertilizers on the water quality.
Agribusinesses are under scrutiny to establish green initiatives that will benefit both farmers and our planet. Fortunately, we already see many farmers taking ownership of the challenge and transforming their agricultural practices into more sustainable businesses. In this article we will highlight the role that design and technology can play in helping agribusinesses and farmers make more sustainable decisions in their day-to-day jobs.
The challenges farmers face to keep their business alive
‘Farming is a complex and unpredictable individual business.’
While new technologies provide opportunities to help modernize the current agriculture and food system, the outcome is difficult to predict as each farm is unique: different landscapes, climates, soil types, available infrastructure, common practices, and financial health to name a few. Not only is the farming industry fragmented and needs to cope with multiple challenges, it is also very diverse in terms of technology adoption & digital maturity across different countries and people. Therefore, we first need to better understand what key challenges farmers face when transitioning toward more sustainable agricultural practices. To crack the case, a human-centric approach can help identify user pain-points and develop tailored solutions for them.
The effects of climate change, such as occurring natural disasters, water scarcity, biodiversity loss and soil erosion, are drastically affecting farmers’ ability to grow food. Simultaneously, some farmers are under regulatory pressure to preserve water and use less harmful fertilizers. According to research conducted by IBM (Justina Nixon-Saintil, 2022), farmers struggle to invest in critical areas of their business — such as technology, yield productivity, storage and transportation — due to a lack of access to financing and cash flow. While overcoming these challenges is easier for large-scale farmers it is not the same for many smallholders who don’t always have access to an affordable source of credit. With limited financial means, the access to new technologies that can help farmers improve their day-to-day practices is also limited. On top of that, not all farmers feel comfortable enough to keep up with new technological developments and use solutions that are based on artificial intelligence and alike. And yet, the lack of knowledge & awareness of such solutions are the first and main barrier hindering adoption and transition toward more sustainable practices. Therefore, it’s important to keep the user, their context and accessibility in mind when designing new solutions.
Accessibility is about including everyone. When you design and build with accessibility in mind, you help create a world where no one is disabled by technology barriers.
Shari Trewin , Program Director, IBM Accessibility
Education is an important factor to ensure a smooth introduction of new technologies. Agricultural and environmental organizations play a crucial role in facilitating knowledge transfer between farmers and their advisors. Such organizations have developed codes of good farming practices and have set up quality assurance schemes. An example of an organization that, amongst others, plays a role in educating smallholder about sustainable agricultural activities is Deltares.
Deltares, is an independent knowledge institute for water and the subsurface that strives to achieve climate-resilient water systems that are ecologically and chemically healthy and managed sustainably. While not an agricultural organization, Deltares certainly has an impact on agricultural practices, as we will illustrate in the following paragraph.
How Deltares improves water quality through digital design
To grow crops, most farmers use artificial fertilizers and manure from livestock, which contain nitrate that can leach into the ground and surface water. High nitrate concentrations in water are a major threat to biodiversity as they can lead to excessive algae growth, depleting the water of oxygen and light which other organisms need to survive. To address this threat, Deltares originally created the Nitrate App to help farmers monitor nitrate levels and give insights into nutrient losses and local water quality. The app uses technologies like GPS and Machine Learning in combination with easy-to-use measurement equipment to make nitrate measurements cheaper and more accessible for individuals. The Nitrate App allows Deltares to collect valuable data for their research and, in turn, they can use the information to help water boards and governments take actions to improve the water quality. On a larger scale and in the longer term, the goal of the Nitrate app is to make farming practices more sustainable, to improve water quality and protect biodiversity.
Achieving greater positive impact by scaling the adoption of Deltares’ Nitrate App
What started as a citizen science project, is now mainly used by farmers, agricultural advisors, researchers, and water authorities across different countries. However, adoption rates, and therefore the impact of the Nitrate app, has been limited as most use cases take place in the context of agricultural pilot programs initiated by Deltares, water authorities or agricultural organizations. This raises the challenge of how the Nitrate app can be scaled up and improved to stimulate more usage and retain users over the long run.
To address this challenge, Deltares submitted a proposal and was selected for the first cohort of IBM’s Sustainability Accelerator program. This is a pro-bono initiative from IBM to support non-profit and governmental organizations in initiatives to fight environmental threats. In this project, IBM helps Deltares improve and accelerate the adoption of the Nitrate app, by leveraging IBM’s expertise in User Experience (UX) design, app development and data. To address user needs, we applied IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking framework and assessed the app from a user perspective. The insights we gained from this helped us to redesign the app in a way that relieves farmers’ pain points, adds more value to the user and increases adoption.
Scaling impact by design
To understand the needs and daily challenges of farmers, the first step was to conduct field research and user interviews. For us that meant going on an excursion to a farm in the Netherlands. Welcomed by a passionate farmer, we wet our feet by (literally) stepping into the farmer’s shoes on the field to see how and in which context and conditions this farmer works. The farmer gave us many insights into their day-to-day life and the challenges encountered on the job.
We interviewed the farmer specifically regarding her habits toward measuring nitrate and performed a user test. Asking the farmer to perform a measurement and observing her using the app allowed us to uncover the farmers needs regarding navigation and specific functionalities, like onboarding, and helped us to validate our assumptions.
The farmer stressed that with the current app, she can identify hotspots of nitrate losses, but she would not know what to do with the results. She wondered how she can reduce the nitrate losses and improve water quality once she has taken a measurement.
“I would like to see information rather than just data”
— Diana, farmer in Flevoland.
By integrating explanations of the results in the right context and possibly advice on mitigation options, the Nitrate app could bring more value to farmers. Back from the farm excursion, we took a closer look at the current app to identify more opportunities for improvement. This was done by performing a heuristic evaluation (Jakob Nielsen, 1994) of both, the current iOS and Android Nitrate app. The evaluation disclosed more usability and accessibility issues, such as missing labels in dark mode and inconsistencies between iOS and Android.
With the results of these design activities as a foundation, we can redesign the app in a way that it provides more value to users while facilitating adoption at scale. Enhancements of the usability, accessibility, and functionality will help increase the adoption of the Nitrate app. An additional factor to consider however is awareness. Only if farmers and their advisors become aware of the existence of the app and the value it brings, can user adoption be increased.
A holistic approach to create value for the business, the people and the planet
Following a human-centric design process and building a good understanding of the user is crucial to have impact and develop the ‘right’ solution, or better to say a solution users will be more likely to adopt. Without knowing why or how farmers use the Nitrate app, it is hard to design a solution that meets their needs and stimulates adoption. Therefore, following the IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking framework helped us to create value for the business, user, and planet.
Our key learnings & conclusions
It’s only when you work on such projects that you start understanding the complexity of transitioning to better sustainable practices within the agricultural industry. Such transition is challenging because of the many variables to consider including regional variations, local regulations, and the lack of access to the right resources. However, adopting a collaborative approach helps in understanding which is the right problem to address. It is crucial to involve users when developing a solution as it will help later for adoption and scaling: you create early adopters that can become great ambassadors sharing the benefits of what you create!
The Use Case of Deltares is just one out of several projects where design & technology meet to bring clear benefits to the user and contribute to developing more sustainable agricultural practices. If you are curious to know more and explore other use cases where IBM deployed a human-centered design approach to help technological adoption and how technology is crucial in solving some of the most urgent sustainable challenges in the field of agriculture, check out the following projects: IBM Food Trust, Thank My Farmer and Yara, or read about the SWAT-based reinforcement learning framework (Malvern Madondo, 2023) developed to optimize crop yield cognizant of fertilizer inputs and irrigation. The paper has been presented by some IBM employees at the AAAI conference 2023 in Washington DC.
This articles has been co-written with Michelle Ten Pas, and co-edited by Rob Wiesener, IBMers working in the iX department, supporting clients with sustainable transformation through the power of experience and business design.
Sources
[1] Hannah Ritchie, Max Roser and Pablo Rosado (2020) - "CO₂ and Greenhouse Gas Emissions". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions' [Online Resource]
[2] NRDC.org
[3] ‘The answer to address water scarcity and quality: technology’ — IBM Blog, June 2022
[4] Deltares.nl
[5] Nitrate App Wiki
[6] IBM Sustainability Accelerator Program
[7] ‘How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation’ — Nielsen Norman Group
[8] ‘A SWAT-based Reinforcement Learning Framework for Crop Management’ — arXiv:2302.04988v1
