Abstract

Digital extension and farmer-centric design are increasingly presented as complementary strategies for transforming agricultural innovation systems: digital extension promises scale and efficiency, while farmer-centric design is expected to ensure relevance, inclusivity, and legitimacy. This paper challenges the assumption that these approaches are naturally aligned. Through Critical Discourse Analysis, we examine how farmer-centricity is enacted within digital extension initiatives and how its normative commitments are reshaped as digital platforms evolve. Empirically, we analyse two digital extension platforms developed between 2014 and 2024, one in the Global North and one in the Global South. Drawing on public-facing media, organisational records, design documents, and technical walkthroughs of each platform, we trace how normative, technical, and interpretive frames interact across different phases of platform development. Our findings show that, in early phases, digital extension is framed as enabling farmer-centric design, supporting decentralised design practices, epistemic pluralism, and farmer sovereignty. Over time, however, farmer-centricity becomes instrumentalised to support the scaling of digital extension through data generation, peer diffusion, and environmental accountability, placing new forms of labour and responsibility onto farmers without a commensurate redistribution of authority. These tensions are not resolved but reconfigured through design practices, often obscured by the rhetoric of empowerment and responsiveness. We conceptualise this dynamic as algorithmic participation: a form of participation mediated through digital infrastructures that anticipate and steer farmer engagement in ways that stabilise existing innovation logics. The paper contributes to debates on farmer-centric design and digital extension by showing how even well-intentioned practices can reproduce structural inequalities.