Andrew WightContributor
Seven decades ago, agricultural scientists used high-yielding, dwarf varieties of wheat and rice to revolutionize agriculture across Asia and Latin America – and now European data scientists are teaming up with Kenyan farmers to use the fruits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to drive the next agricultural one.
The Green Revolution produced massive increases in crop yields throughout Asia and Latin America, but even today, many smallholders –farmers who produce crops on small pieces of land – struggle to afford and utilize the mechanized equipment and agricultural chemicals that came with that revolution.
When it comes to Africa, there is still great potential for productivity increases in agriculture. The number of small-holder farmers in Kenya could be between 5 million and 9 million people according to some estimates.
In order to see how artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data could help those farmers, French consultancy firm Capgemini teamed up with a Kenyan social enterprise in the Kakamega region in Western Kenya.
Capgemini has developed Project FARM (Financial and Agricultural Recommendation Models), at their Applied Innovation Exchange Collaboration Zone in the Netherlands, to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to crunch farming data and then send insights out to farmers’ cell phones.
This solution has been built in collaboration with Agrics, a social enterprise operating in East Africa, which provides local farmers with agricultural products and services on credit to thousands of clients.
By providing these services, the company says, maize production of their clients in Western Kenya went from an average 6 bags (of 90 kg each) to 9 bags per farmer after a single year.
Capgemini and AGRICS first engaged in talks in August 2018,with the beta version in action by January 2019.
Violanda de Man, Innovation Manager at Agrics East Africa said the data gathered by AGRICS provided much of the information needed for the FARM project.
Nehemiah Lukhovi, a Kenyan farmer who participated in the project, is upbeat about the benefits.
“I receive SMS alerts on my phone so that I know how to do my farm work and my farm projects,” he said.
Julian van Velzen, Data Analyst at Capgemini and FARM project leader said the platform can pave the way for bringing automated farming to small-scale farmers.
“Suppose you are a small farmer and you are sowing your lands, but there is a huge rain coming up the next day and this rain can damage all of your crops,” he said.
We can provide and share the insights just to wait for the next few days, so that your crops are saved”
“FARM has been developed with scalability in mind,” Van Velzen said, adding that Capgemini developed the system pro-bono and IBM has sponsored the FARM project.
Van Velzen says Kenya’s smallholder farmer economy is fascinating, in that it doesn’t use bank cards for transactions, but micropayments via SMS text messages.
“You don’t need a bank card or account to participate – just a mobile phone,” he said, ”This is why we’ve encrypted the phone numbers of individual users to protect their privacy.”
These efforts are part of a larger trend in Africa of using technology in agriculture to boost productivity and improve the livelihoods of small-farmers across the continent.
Agrix is a a start-up based in Yaoundé, Cameroon, which is developing artificial intelligence tools to help detect plant diseases, as well as services to prevent and treat those diseases.
According to Quartz, the company is planning to roll out its platform continent-wide at the start of 2020.
Further south, in Rwanda, a group of young entrepreneurs have formed Charis Unmanned Aerial Solutions, which is using drones for agricultural purposes, with a pilot program of 28 farmers.
Back in Kenya, AGRICS is looking to expand, with hopes that the FARM project will provide additional advantages to those small-holders.