By Desry Lesele, Senior Manager for Agribusiness Client Value Propositions at Nedbank Commercial Banking.

For decades, farming has been built around physical things you can see and touch: land, machinery, storage systems, and long-standing relationships with suppliers and buyers. Those things still matter, but another layer is increasingly being added to the mix: digital platforms that enable farmers to buy inputs, secure finance and make everyday decisions more efficiently.

What stands out is not just that these tools exist, but how quickly they are being adopted in practical, everyday farming operations.

South Africa already has the basic building blocks for this shift. Mobile phone use is almost universal, smartphones are widespread and, according to World Bank research, just short of 80% of the population now has internet access. In agriculture, digital tools are already helping farmers source inputs, compare, get advice, and access financial services. Earlier research suggested that only about 26% of smallholder farmers were using digital technologies, but that number is rising as these tools become more useful and more accessible.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says that a major driver behind this shift is the increasing pressure on farmers to improve productivity while managing greater uncertainty. Agricultural businesses are operating in an environment of continuing input cost pressures, tighter margins, increasingly volatile weather patterns and fluctuating commodity prices. At the same time, customers and financiers are placing greater emphasis on efficiency, traceability and sustainability.

These factors are making timely, data-driven decision-making far more important than it was even a decade ago. Digital platforms help farmers respond by improving access to market information, increasing price transparency and streamlining purchasing and financing decisions. We have seen this firsthand through the collaboration between Nedbank Agribusiness and online agri-input marketplace, PrysWys. Launched in May last year, the partnership was designed to close a very real gap in agriculture: the disconnect between buying inputs and paying for them.

Through the PrysWys platform, farmers can request quotes, compare prices, place orders, and access pre-approved financing for key inputs such as fertiliser, seed, livestock feed, and fuel. The platform is helping to simplify how farmers buy what they need by connecting them directly with trusted suppliers at competitive prices. That improves price discovery, transparency and makes inputs more accessible, especially in areas where availability can be a challenge.

The early results have been encouraging and, since its launch, the Nedbank partnership has seen an 80% increase in users. This suggests that digital activity is translating into real financial decisions, and that farmers are becoming more comfortable managing parts of their businesses online – not as a side activity, but as part of how they operate. As adoption grows, digital platforms have the potential to improve not only access to inputs and finance, but also the efficiency, transparency and competitiveness of the agricultural value chain as a whole.

Importantly, this move to digital is not about replacing existing relationships in agriculture. Farmers still rely heavily on agronomists, advisers, and long-standing supplier networks. What’s changing is that they now have more tools alongside those relationships – tools that help them compare options, save time, and make quicker decisions.

Banks are also changing how they fit into this picture. Rather than only stepping in when finance is needed, financial institutions are increasingly becoming part of the systems farmers already use. That means embedding finance directly into platforms like PrysWys so that funding is available at the point of purchase, not as a separate process.

As more agricultural transactions move onto digital platforms, they also generate a richer picture of how farm businesses operate. Over time, this can give financial institutions a better understanding of farm businesses, enabling more tailored financial solutions, faster credit decisions and more responsive risk management. In this way, digital agriculture is not only changing how farmers buy inputs, but also how financial institutions assess and support agricultural businesses.

There are still real challenges to resolve. Not all farming areas have reliable connectivity, and levels of digital confidence vary widely. If digital agriculture is going to work for everyone, those gaps will need attention.

But the direction is clear. Farmers are no longer experimenting with digital tools; they are incorporating them into the way they manage risk, control costs and grow their businesses. As these platforms become more connected, they have the potential to create a more efficient, transparent and financially inclusive agricultural ecosystem that benefits producers, suppliers and financiers alike. The future of agriculture will always depend on the land. Increasingly, however, it will also depend on the digital systems that help farmers make better decisions, improve profitability and build more resilient businesses.