June marked a major milestone for AGX AI
This month, all three of our working groups officially kicked off! Researchers, farmer advocates, agri-tech innovators, and policymakers came together around the same shared question: what do we need to do, as an ecosystem, to make AI-driven advisory work for small scale producers?
We are proud of this milestone and wanted to take you behind the scenes of how it all comes together, what these working groups are, why the discussion papers they’re producing matter, and why we believe this collaborative approach is essential to getting AI advisory services right for small-scale agriculture.
What are discussion papers, and why do they matter?
AGX AI is a community of communities. Our mission is to bring together diverse players across small-scale agriculture to get them thinking rigorously about what it takes to design effective AI advisory services for farmers. Our role is to surface, connect, and amplify practical insights from this community. We do this through a variety of approaches that foster thoughtful debate and deep interrogation, including physical convenings, partnerships, a web hub, and working groups.
The result is a set of discussion papers that take conversations from convenings and working groups and transform them into something concrete – a shared foundation that the broader field can learn from, interrogate, and build on.
Ten papers. Three thematic working groups. One goal: make sure the decisions shaping AI advisory are practical and inclusive.
How a discussion paper comes together
The process of getting to the latest version of a discussion paper happens over months and across multiple virtual and physical convenings. The following provides a brief overview of how it all comes together:
Internal review and research
Each discussion paper starts with rigorous desktop research by the AGX AI team. We comb through existing research to identify what has been tried, what worked, gaps, and practical use cases. The result is an initial outline and set of research questions.
Search for a lead author
This is one of the most important decisions in the whole process. We do not write these papers from the inside out. Instead, we find a lead author from within the community – someone with deep, lived expertise in that specific domain. We are deliberate about choosing authors who have sat with smallholder farmers, understood their realities, and built solutions in that context. This combination of domain expertise and first-hand experience working with smallholder farmers brings a necessary kind of nuance (that is very important given the topic is small-scale agriculture) and is what enhances our discussion papers’ credibility.
Review and refinement of the first outline
Once the lead author is on board, they sit with the outline and pull it apart. Their role is to set the direction of the entire discussion paper. For example, an initial framing of our delivery paper might ask: how do we deliver AI advisory through trusted channels, and who are the right intermediaries? The lead author comes back and reorients the question altogether: “The real question is not: how can we make farmers trust AI advisory, but rather how can we make AI advisory more trustworthy.” This change might seem like a small shift in framing, but it transforms the questions the paper investigates, the evidence it looks for, and the conclusions it can draw. Before the working group ever sees the paper, the lead author has already made sure it is asking the question that actually matters.
The outline meets the room
By the time the community engages with the discussion paper for the first time, it already has a foundation. Research has been done, experts have come on board, and the outline has been refined.
However, outlines have a funny habit of changing once more people enter the conversation.
A question that seemed straightforward suddenly becomes more complicated. An assumption gets challenged. Someone shares an experience from the field that shifts the discussion entirely.
Community engagement isn’t about finalizing the paper. It’s about making sure the paper is heading in the right direction. By the end of the conversation, the group isn’t just working from an outline, they’re working from a shared understanding of what matters most.
A paper written in conversation
No one sits down and writes the final discussion paper in a single draft. Instead, it grows through conversations.
Across multiple meetings, contributors bring examples from their work, challenge one another’s thinking, and build on ideas that emerge along the way. Some arguments become stronger. Others are rewritten or abandoned altogether.
With every discussion, the paper becomes sharper, more grounded, and closer to reflecting the realities it hopes to address.
By the time drafting is complete, the paper carries traces of every conversation that helped shape it.
Challenging the draft
A good discussion paper shouldn’t just survive scrutiny, it should benefit from it.
That’s why every draft goes through internal and external review. Reviewers look for gaps in reasoning, question assumptions, test recommendations, and push the paper to be clearer, stronger, and more useful.
Sometimes that means revisiting sections. Sometimes it means rethinking them entirely. It can be one of the most demanding stages of the process, but it is also one of the most valuable. Every challenge makes the final paper better.
Beyond Publication
Eventually, the discussions settle, the feedback is incorporated, and the final draft is ready to be shared.
By this stage, the paper is no longer just an outline or a collection of ideas. It is a reflection of months of conversations, debates, lived experiences, and collective problem-solving. It has been shaped by researchers, practitioners, farmer organizations, policymakers, innovators, and others working across the ecosystem. Each contribution adds another layer of perspective, helping to create a discussion paper that is both grounded and collaborative.
Once published, the paper becomes part of a wider conversation. It is shared with the broader community not as a final word on the topic, but as a resource that can spark new ideas, inform future work, and encourage continued dialogue around responsible AI-driven advisory for small-scale producers.
Explore the discussion papers
Curious to dive deeper? Explore the AGX AI Discussion Paper series, where you’ll find the latest papers covering the key themes shaping responsible AI advisory for small-scale producers.
Read the discussion papers: AGX AI Discussion Papers