Can AI Help the World’s Poorest and the Planet?Experimental Evidence from 2,450 Smallholders in the Philippines and India

Join our Operations and Technology Management seminar

Speaker: Canberk Ucel, Assistant Professor, ESSEC Business School

About the seminar topic

Smallholder farmers are central to global food security and climate mitigation but they face persistent barriers to adopting proven, sustainable technologies. Digital advisory tools, supported by growing mobile phone use and rural internet access, offer significant promise. Yet many industry-led efforts have struggled with low engagement and limited impact. In this talk, I will present his ongoing large-scale randomised controlled field trials in the Philippines and India, which test whether generative AI can help overcome these challenges by delivering timely, localised and interactive farm advice to 2,500 rice farmers via commonly used platforms like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The study compares simple AI access to an incentive-driven engagement arm and a control group that interacts with a light-hearted, non-advisory chatbot. The talk will focus on early insights from the rich farmer interaction data and usage patterns and will also introduce briefly how this work fits into a broader research agenda, spanning several on-going studies in other major smallholder regions, eg Sub-Saharan Africa and micro-enterprises in other industries, eg micro-retailers.

Speaker bio

Canberk Ucel is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at ESSEC Business School. His research focuses on the challenges faced by small and micro-enterprises, which employ two-thirds of the global workforce. Currently, his work in the agricultural sector draws on operational data from thousands of farms, collected through industry partnerships, to provide actionable insights for businesses and policymakers. His studies, recognised with academic awards and acknowledged by industry, highlight the economic, social and environmental impact of micro enterprises. More recently, he has been exploring digital advisory tools based on large language models to support the adoption of improved practices and technologies. Dr Ucel holds a PhD and MSc from the Wharton School. He has previously taught at Bilkent University and continues to collaborate with the Sustainable Business Initiative at INSEAD, where he was a visiting scholar.

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No registration required. If you have any questions about this seminar, please email Bet Brooke.