Rikin Gandhi’s Vision for Farmer-Centered AI

Rikin Gandhi never planned to transform farming with AI, but a single question changed his path: Could the same tech driving global innovation also empower small-scale farmers? Rikin began his career as an engineer in big tech. There, he saw firsthand how digital tools could amplify knowledge-sharing — and he knew this power could transform lives and livelihoods. So he co-founded Digital Green, an organization putting practical, human-centered tech into farmers’ hands across South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Today, Digital Green brings that vision to life with an AI coach that amplifies, rather than replaces, farmers’ knowledge, called Farmer.Chat. What began as simple, farmer-made training videos has evolved into a robust AI platform that offers on-demand guidance through text, voice, image, and video. But it’s a different kind of AI. Digital Green’s Farmer.Chat delivers locally relevant advice instead of one-size-fits-all responses. This hyper-local, hyper-useful data comes from its vast troves of farmer-generated content, gathered from Digital Green’s 16 years providing a peer-to-peer farmer advice platform. By building on farmers’ expertise and tailoring advice to their unique challenges, Digital Green has become a trusted resource for almost 7M farmers striving to improve their livelihoods.

We talked to Rikin to learn how his vision is rewriting what’s possible for farmers — and how tech, when designed with local insight and human-centered values, can make a global impact.

How did your journey inspire you to explore AI for humanity?

At Digital Green, our core belief is simple yet powerful: the world's most advanced technology should serve those who need it most. In our case, these are farmers. We started by putting cameras in the hands of the farmers themselves, letting them create videos to share their knowledge with other farmers. It was fascinating. Whenever we showed these farmer-to-farmer videos, the first questions were always personal, like “Who is that farmer?” and “Which village are they from?” This human connection sparked something in me. We'd already reached 6M farmers across South Asia and Africa through our video-sharing program, but I knew we could dream bigger. Then, our YouTube channel hit 85M views. This happened to coincide with the recent leaps in AI, and I saw the possibility of combining these trusted farmer-to-farmer videos with AI technology to multiply our impact. That's how Farmer.Chat was born. This app speaks the farmer's language, literally and figuratively, making agricultural knowledge accessible through voice and images. What excites me most is that we're now able to support each farmer for just 35 cents instead of $35, meaning we can reach so many more farming families who need this information to thrive.

What unexpected lessons have you learned from collaborating with farmers, and how have they influenced Digital Green’s approach to building practical, community-centered AI products?

One of our biggest “aha” moments came when we realized that even our carefully crafted, farmer-led videos sometimes missed the mark. Farming isn't one-size-fits-all. Every field, every climate zone, and every community has its own story. What works in one village might be completely irrelevant just a few miles away. That's where AI became a game-changer for us, but not in the way we initially expected. Instead of pushing information out, AI lets farmers pull in what matters most to them. And here's the beautiful irony, even when Farmer.Chat doesn't have the perfect answer, these “misses” have become some of our most valuable insights. Our farmers, who are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, are actually teaching our AI system, and us, what they truly need.

Women farmers are at the heart of Digital Green’s mission. How are your tools helping reshape gender roles in agriculture, and why is gender-inclusive design essential to your AI platform?

There's a saying in farming communities: “Seeing is believing.” But for too long, women farmers — despite being the backbone of agriculture worldwide — haven't seen themselves represented in agricultural knowledge systems. We're changing that narrative. When we feature women farmers as the stars in our videos, something magical happens. Other women farmers don't just see new techniques, they see themselves and what's possible. We noticed that women use Farmer.Chat more frequently than men, and it makes sense. Traditional agricultural extension services haven't always created safe spaces for women to ask questions freely. That's why we're building our AI to speak their language — literally — by developing speech models for underrepresented languages like Kikuyu in Kenya, incorporating the specific agricultural terms women farmers use every day.

What core values drive your unique vision for impact in an AI-driven future?

When I talk with farmers, they often tell me, “We don't need another app or tool telling us what worked on some big industrial farm. We need solutions that understand our reality.” This truth guides everything we do at Digital Green. We're building toward an AI future that puts power back in farmers' hands, especially the 600M smallholder farmers who feed much of our world. But here's the thing, this vision only works if we get the fundamentals right. Like protecting farmers' data, ensuring they're fairly compensated for sharing their knowledge, and making our systems truly representative of farming's incredible diversity. We're committed to making our AI platform a digital public good, like a well that everyone can draw from to build solutions that serve farmers' real needs.

Which visionary leaders, philosophies, or movements give you hope for a more human-centered AI future?

I’m most inspired by women farmers gathering to form self-help groups, or seeing small cooperatives grow into powerful voices in their communities. These grassroots movements show us what's possible when people come together with purpose. While AI alone won't solve the climate crisis or transform agriculture overnight, I've seen something remarkable happening. When we pair AI tools with these passionate farmer organizations, it amplifies their existing strength. Every time I visit a farming community using our technology, I see small but significant steps forward. Farmers are helping farmers, using both ancient wisdom and modern AI to build better lives for themselves and their neighbors.