<p>Smallholder farmers play a pivotal role in agriculture and rural communities. Integrating them into the digital environment holds significant potential for reducing hunger and enhancing food security. To unlock this potential, extensive studies concentrated on the competences (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) of smallholder farmers in adopting digital technologies and proposed corresponding development suggestions. Unfortunately, the practical application of these suggestions is constrained due to limitations imposed by specific contexts and theoretical perspectives. Moreover, the weak interconnection among studies makes it difficult to globally identify and grasp important or overlooked competences. To address these, this study employed a systematic review approach to identify key competence areas and research dynamics. A total of 56 studies were included in this review after methodical identification, evaluation, and synthesis. Through coding and analyzing these studies, we have identified two main findings. First, the adoption of digital technologies by smallholder farmers is crucially dependent on six competence areas: information literacy, communication, digital content creation, safety, problem-solving, and basic technical skills. However, there is insufficient attention to digital content creation and safety. Second, these studies tend to focus more on the multiple competence areas of smallholder farmers and increasingly emphasize creatively using digital technologies. Nevertheless, the studies that comprehensively considered all competence areas remained scarce. Consequently, we propose recommendations for enhancing the digital competences of smallholder farmers and expanding research perspectives. The findings of this study support the competence development and training programs for smallholder farmers in the digital environment.</p>