The FoodSystems 2030 (FS2030) is an Umbrella Multi-Donor Trust Fund that seeks to help countries transform their food systems and advance towards the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly zero poverty and hunger by 2030. It leverages the financing and experience of the World Bank to help countries rethink and transform their food systems from farm to fork, delivering improved livelihoods and affordable, sustainable, and nutritious diets for all. The trust fund provides advice and analytical products to underpin policy options, funds to pilot innovative approaches, and information to build support for change in different country contexts. It engages with the private sector by supporting the design, piloting, and de-risking of innovative public-private partnerships that advance development and climate goals.

The State of Israel’s Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security have contributed to FS2030 to assist the World Bank and IFC clients in addressing the global food system challenges through knowledge and best practice sharing of the Israeli experiences and innovations in the agricultural domain. Through this trust fund, the World Bank can support the Philippine government in its goal of modernizing agriculture and agribusiness, as stated in the Philippine Development Plan 2023–2028 (PDP) and explained in a prior blog. 

The World Bank is supporting the Department of Agriculture’s PRDP Scale-Up through a Technical Assistance (TA) that aims to demonstrate proof-of-concept for enhancing agriculture value chains by strengthening capacities at the national government level and the farmer organization level on leveraging agriculture technologies and digital innovations to improve analytics, advisory services, and farm management. This TA identified strategies through pilot-testing of digitally enabled solutions that promote data management and innovation. It will also facilitate knowledge sharing and foster adoption for scaling out the pilot-tested technology.

The scope of the TA included designing a feasible pilot that integrated yieldsApp solutions into PRDP Systems to enhance:

a. Nutrient Management and soil health;

b. Pest and disease management;

c. Crop yield prediction; and

d. Data integration from various regional data repositories for a better dashboard design that will provide an integrated intelligence platform for decision makers.

Introducing yieldsApp: From Field to Intelligence

yieldsApp is an agronomic intelligence platform built to deliver data-driven, real-time agronomic recommendations that improve productivity and input efficiency, especially for smallholder farmers. It transforms raw field data into precise, personalized insights by integrating satellite imagery, localized weather data, field observations, and internal crop, pest, and disease models–bridging the gap between traditional farming practices and digital agriculture.

This technology represents a major step forward in making advanced agronomy accessible, scalable, and effective, even in resource-limited settings. The platform provides powerful planning and decision-support tools, including planting date optimization, harvest timing predictions, and real-time alerts that detect threats early. Empowering farmers to take proactive measures before damage occurs.

Its mobile app works offline, supports local languages, and is specifically built for ease of use, making it practical and effective for daily use in the field. These features address real barriers faced by millions of farmers in the Philippines, where connectivity remains limited and most producers operate on less than two hectares.

Beyond individual farm support, yieldsApp functions as a centralized digital platform that enables the digitization of smallholder farms at scale. By standardizing agronomic data collection and turning it into actionable intelligence, the platform helps reduce fertilizer waste, optimize the timing of interventions, and significantly boost crop performance. Results from multi-season pilot programs and commercial implementations across Latin America, Europe, and Africa consistently show yield increases of 15 to 30 percent and fertilizer savings of 20 to 45 percent. These outcomes are based on multi-year datasets from hundreds of farms participating in both pilot programs and active customer projects, including, for example, barley, corn, and sunflower in Europe; sugarcane in Latin America; and smallholder vegetable and rice farms in Africa (Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya), operating under diverse climatic and soil conditions.

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Created by agronomist and CEO Guy Sela, who has over 20 years of international experience in precision agriculture, irrigation, and sustainable crop management, yieldsApp reflects a deep understanding of both technical agronomy and on-the-ground realities in developing farming systems.

As a digital backbone, yieldsApp connects farms with cooperatives, extension workers, and national institutions, enabling transparent data flows, coordinated action, and better decision-making from field to policy level. In doing so, it doesn’t just support individual farmers; it helps transform agricultural systems from reactive and fragmented to resilient, data-driven, and climate-smart.

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 The Mission: From Field Visits to Farmer Validation

The PRDP-SU yieldsApp Pilot was launched in March 2025 with a technical mission in April to Baguio City and Tuba, Benguet. The initiative, led by the Department of Agriculture through the PRDP and supported by the World Bank, brought together DA-CAR officials, the TAFARMCO cooperative, and local vegetable farmers to evaluate the platform in real conditions.

During the mission, the team conducted on-farm demonstrations, delivered training sessions, and visited six active farms. Each session focused on practical use cases, including digital profiling, pest scouting, nutrient planning, and AI-powered disease diagnosis.

At Eddie Tocle’s Chinese cabbage field, yieldsApp had already flagged five pest and disease risks before the visit. All five were confirmed during the field visit. Eddie, with no prior experience using the app, was able to log a pest observation and receive a full treatment recommendation without assistance.

In Taloy Norte, Ruthilda Bosaing demonstrated the photo diagnosis tool. She guided the team to a plant showing symptoms, captured an image using the app, and received an instant identification of powdery mildew and leaf spot. The diagnosis was verified on-site. Ruthilda noted how helpful the feature would be when technical support is unavailable

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 In Taloy Sur, Marilyn Lozada compared her current fertilizer schedule with the recommendation provided by yieldsApp. The app suggested a more balanced and cost-effective plan, allowing her to reduce unnecessary inputs while maintaining productivity. 

TAFARMCO was also integrated into the platform during the visit. Its cooperative dashboard now connects over 20 farms, enabling real-time monitoring of pest alerts, nutrient schedules, and harvest timelines. This digital overview allows the cooperative to provide more timely and targeted support to its members.

These demonstrations were captured in a video produced by PRDP, highlighting field validation, farmer feedback, and cooperative engagement.

Check out the PRDP mission video: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1208110810995572

The pilot demonstrated specific use cases to leverage digital technology that align well with the long-term vision of the DA’s digital transformation. Cooperative leaders recognized its potential for improving service delivery. As a result, this pilot has laid the foundation for broader scaling across other regions for institutional adoption and for private sector engagement.

Learnings from the Pilot 

The PRDP-SU yieldsApp pilot successfully provided the team with valuable insights on how the Philippines can learn from other countries’ modern digital agricultural practices (using tools such as AI) to further its goal of advancing the digitalization of agricultural practice nationwide.

Farmer Engagement

Farmers must be acknowledged as key stakeholders in a nation’s agricultural ecosystem. As observed and discussed during the pilot, the adoption and implementation of new technology at the farm level would require a robust farmer engagement program to develop capacity building. On-site training with agronomic support and designing the incentives for farmers to utilize the new technology would accelerate the integration of better practices and improve the agricultural ecosystem on a systemic level.

Availability of Relevant Data

Local calibration of the yieldsApp system requires the availability of macro time-series data on soil health, climate, fertilizers, pest interventions, and local agricultural practice. This calibration enables the system to provide accurate recommendations to the farmer user based on local context. The assistance of the LGUs and various DA offices (i.e., BSWM, HVCDP, FPA, etc.) have been crucial in satisfying the system’s requirements.

Full-Cycle Data Collection

More evidence of the yieldsApp system’s ability to improve crop health and crop yields can be observed through data collection over the course of a full crop growth cycle. In such an activity, the team must attentively monitor crops in selected farms through both the yieldsApp system and the farmers’ own observations for a complete validation of the technology’s benefits.

Localization and Functionality Improvements

The yieldsApp system, while having several features developed to adapt to the Philippine context (such as setting the system in the local language and integrating local pests in the system database), we learned that a more extensive data integration is necessary for adoption of the technology. Through continued discussions with the DA and the farmer cooperatives, additional data on local fertilizer inputs, pesticides, soil data, and conventions on units used in the system can be integrated to improve reliability and interoperability.

In addition, yieldsApp’s functionality can be improved further with API integration of more local weather stations and enhanced mapping tools for farm boundary setting to support better farm management. User-friendly tutorials, community support, and offline capabilities would also increase accessibility and adoption among Filipino farmers.

International Solutions

From our observations during the pilot, technologies adopted from international partners can be localized for the Philippine context through consultation and observation of the local context. The adoption of the yieldsApp technology and its localization could be a good starting point for the DA to more closely consider localizing international solutions as an affordable and expeditious alternative to local solutions.

Perspective of the Private Sector

The Jollibee Group Foundation (JGF), the social development arm of the Jollibee Group, has long been committed to empowering smallholder farmers by strengthening their capacity to supply institutional markets through its Agro-Enterprise Clustering Approach (AECA)—a model that has also been adopted by the Department of Agriculture in organizing farmers.

Building on this experience, JGF was invited by the World Bank to explore and assess the potential of digital agriculture tools such as yieldsApp, given JGF’s extensive farmer engagement and its partnership with the Taloy Farmers Multi-Purpose Cooperative. From a private sector perspective, it is critical to first generate strong, evidence-based outcomes from the pilot before scaling up. Demonstrating measurable improvements in farm productivity, data reliability, and farmer usability across a full crop cycle will provide the confidence needed for private sector partners to invest in and expand such innovations.

Once these results are validated, JGF and like-minded organizations can play a pivotal role in integrating digital tools into value chains, co-developing training programs, and designing market incentives that encourage adoption—ultimately ensuring farmer inclusion and long-term sustainability.

Next Steps

The pilot with yieldsApp demonstrated the potential use of the technology for more dynamic and real-time data analytics that could contribute to the DA’s digital transformation vision–linking farmers to markets, reducing risk, and enabling better decision-making. 

To build on this success and move towards a wider, national-level implementation, several key steps are required. A strategic plan must be developed to create an enabling environment for improved accessibility and affordability of digital solutions and spur the private sector’s adoption of the solution at scale. It is also essential to maintain a direct and open communication channel between farmers/FCAs (such as TAFARMCO) and digital solutions service providers such as yieldsApp. For further confirmation of productivity outcomes from such solutions, sufficient evidence of the platform’s usability must be continuously gathered. For the case of the pilot under PRDP-SU, the Jollibee Group Foundation partnered with TAFARMCO to finance the YieldsApp subscription for a full three-month agricultural cycle to secure enhanced local support for future activities. Strategic partnerships such as this are proof of how the public and private sector can come together to sustainably support innovations R&D and innovations adoption of farmer groups.