Economics, Business and Management: Recent Advances Vol. 4

Digital public infrastructure is attracting attention as a means of connecting agricultural services that have developed as separate applications, databases and delivery programmes. Its relevance to smallholders depends not simply on digitising transactions, but on whether reusable systems improve access, service quality and bargaining opportunities without creating new exclusions or dependencies. This critical narrative review examines evidence on digital extension, agricultural markets, rural finance and data governance, distinguishing evaluated services from the infrastructure through which they might eventually operate. Literature published from January 2000 to 22 July 2026 was considered through targeted searches of open scholarly records, publisher and institutional repositories, and authoritative policy sources. Experimental studies support benefits from some advisory, payment and market interventions, but effects vary with information relevance, complementary resources, service design and household circumstances. Improvements in knowledge or adoption do not consistently translate into higher profits, while gains from financial access may occur through livelihood diversification rather than agricultural intensification. Evidence directly identifying the additional benefits of interoperable agricultural infrastructure remains substantially thinner than evidence about individual digital services. Farmer registries, shared data exchange and payment systems can lower repeated verification and coordination burdens, but these mechanisms remain conditional on data quality, workable correction procedures, competition and reliable human assistance. Land-linked registration, household-level targeting and data-intensive financial assessment require particular scrutiny because technical inclusion can coexist with unequal control over resources and information. The review develops an analytical distinction between service effectiveness, infrastructure additionality and distributional legitimacy. It argues for evaluating these separately rather than treating enrolment, transaction counts or data integration as proxies for welfare. Research priorities include comparative tests of shared versus stand-alone service delivery, longitudinal assessment of exclusion and indebtedness, and full-cost evaluation of maintenance and redress. Agricultural digital public infrastructure is best understood as a governed institutional arrangement whose public value must be demonstrated, not as an intrinsically inclusive technology.