Smallholder farmers are an essential piece of the world’s food production system. As global demand for food rises, agricultural technologies offer new opportunities to increase farming productivity, profitability and environmental sustainability—so why are these farmers being left behind?
Income, equity and environmental impact
Trisna Mulyati grew up in Aceh, Indonesia, during a period of hostility. For almost 30 years, as the Free Aceh Movement fought for the province’s independence, one of the key issues fanning the flames of the conflict was the distribution of wealth generated by Aceh’s natural resources.
While the conflict was largely focused on oil, natural gas and timber, the questions it raised of income, equity and environmental impact would go on to shape Trisna’s future path. She left home at 17, moving to Bandung to pursue an industrial engineering degree. Even then, Aceh was never far from her mind.
“I was always thinking about my hometown problems. I got into the best engineering university and deliberately chose a program that offered a systems approach to solving problems,” says Trisna, now a PhD candidate at the UTS Transdisciplinary School.
As her career began, Trisna found herself drawn to the agricultural technology (agtech) sector, inspired in part by her own family’s farming background. Agtech refers to tools, technologies and business models that can improve farming productivity, profitability and environmental sustainability.
But despite agtech’s massive potential, Trisna soon discovered that its benefits weren’t being equally shared among the farming community.
“Having worked in this space for eight years in both academia and industry, unfortunately I’ve seen small farmers being continuously left behind,” she says.
It’s a challenge that embodies many of the themes that defined Trisna’s experience of the Aceh conflict: If smallholder farmers are such a central piece of the global farming puzzle, why aren’t they sharing in agtech’s spoils?
Featured researcher
Doctoral researcher, School of Transdisciplinary Innovation
Farmers at the forefront of agricultural innovation
Agriculture is a vital global system, producing the food that sustains human life and driving economic and employment opportunities around the world. Smallholder farmers (those who operate on less than 10 hectares) are an essential cog in the machine: of the world’s 608 million family farms, 85% are smaller than 2 hectares but produce 35% of the world’s food.
But global demand for food is rising, and so too are the social and environmental impacts associated with contemporary farming. Agtech offers new opportunities to address these challenges by increasing crop yields and profits, improving the environmental outcomes of contemporary farming practices, and preparing farmers for the ongoing challenge of climate change.
For many smallholder farmers, however, gaining access to these innovations remains a distant dream, even as these technologies offer real opportunities to improve their lives. In part, this is because agtech innovators are often far removed from the farms they’re designing for. In turn, the tools they produce don’t always reflect the needs of farmers, if they even reach them in the first place.
For Trisna, who spent years working in and around the agriculture sector before landing at UTS, it’s an all-too-familiar challenge. With no viable solution in sight, she decided to take matters into her own hands.
“My research explores how these smallholders can be better included in the increasing trend of technology advancement and neo-rural entrepreneurship. This isn’t necessarily about developing new agtech tools, but about accessible and relevant innovation adaptation, implementation, and ultimately diffusion,” she says.
Bridging this gap means bringing innovators, farmers and intermediaries together to rethink the role of agritech at the smallholder scale. The goal is to enable conversations and partnerships in which farmers are central to the development of solutions that benefit farming communities, the agriculture system and the environment alike.
“There’s enormous potential for technology-driven growth, but agtech start-ups need to go-beyond fly-in, fly-out models. Farmers need long-tern partnerships, not one-time interventions,” Trisna says.
608M
Family farms around the world
What is AgTech?
AgTech, short for agricultural technology, is the use of innovative tools and data-driven solutions to make farming more efficient, sustainable and profitable. From precision sensors and smart irrigation to automated harvesting, AgTech is transforming how we grow and produce food around the world.
We need an approach where the farmer’s point of view is better understood. It’s about creating change with access to relevant innovations, entrepreneurial pathways and more sustainable livelihoods.
Rethinking global farming practices
Despite the global scale of the problem, Trisna’s approach has been to start small, focusing on smallholder farmers in Indonesia. In her first year, she conducted extensive fieldwork and data collection in four provinces in Indonesia: Jakarta, West Java, Bali and Aceh.
She and her collaborators interviewed 131 agtech stakeholders, including farmers, startups, NGOs, companies and governments to better understand the gap between agtech innovation and application. What do farmers want and need from agtech? How can innovators translate these wants and needs into meaningful, usable and sustainable solutions?
As Trisna had suspected, getting innovators and farmers in the room together turned out to be a crucial step.
25-30%
of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food systems
We were able to connect agtech actors who otherwise might never have really talked to each other. Being aware of and [understanding] how to handle the existing tensions between different [stakeholder] perspectives in the agriculture innovation system is really important here
The research is still in its early stages, but already, Trisna and her collaborators have produced a series of findings that are pointing both innovators and farmers in the right direction.
This includes the creation of 10 best practices for agtech startups that reinforce the need to work closely with smallholder farmers. Among them are on-farm demonstrations of agtech tools, collaborations that enable effective farm financing and prioritising farmer return on investment.
Equitable access drives sustainable change
Already, these efforts are enabling more equitable access to agtech among smallholder farmers, leading to visible shifts towards more sustainable farming outcomes. These include small changes that create new income streams, reduce environmental impacts and build stronger farming networks.
“The work is already creating change, like supporting women farmers to move from wood-fired cooking to cleaner technologies and turning everyday farm waste into natural fertiliser that can be sold,” Trisna says.
“I’ve also seen new collaboration initiatives and innovation models being discussed, planned and implemented. For example, I’m now informally advising a social enterprise in Aceh that is building a regenerative farmers hub.”
Trisna’s work might currently be based in Indonesia, but her vision is for a sustainable agricultural system that will be reordered to meet the needs of smallholder farmers around the world. And she’s already on the way: while the research is still in its early stages, it offers a potent glimpse of how opening the door to innovation for the game’s smallest players can lead to outsized benefits for us all.
At UTS, Trisna Mulyati is building a greener, more equitable global farming system. Because it’s not just a university—it’s a partner for a more sustainable future. What can we be for you?
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