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Paper short abstract

We evaluated a digital advisory service reaching millions of farmers in eastern India. The service improved agricultural knowledge, practices, and yields, while reducing crop loss. Effects are largest in areas hit by weather shocks, where harvests increased by 9% and severe crop loss fell by 21%.

Paper long abstract

We evaluate at scale the impact of a digital agricultural advisory service reaching millions of smallholder farmers in an eastern state of India. We randomized the rollout of the service among rice farmers within five districts, and measured the impact on agricultural outcomes using both survey and remote sensing data. Using survey data, we find that access to the digital service leads to significant improvements in farmers’ knowledge and adoption of recommended practices, a modest increase in rice yield and harvest, and a large reduction in the likelihood of rice crop loss on average. Further analyses suggest that the treatment impact is concentrated in areas hit by weather shocks such as excess and inadequate rainfall, increasing harvest by up to 9% and reducing severe crop loss by up to 21% in affected areas. We use vegetation indices (VIs) to construct an objective yield measure for all farmers in the study sample and confirm that our key survey results are robust against differential attrition, reporting biases, and survey sample selection.