Start-ups are using digital platforms to change the face of agriculture and help the farming community. DANIEL ESSIET reports.
The Group Managing Director of Ogunmod Farms located in Ile-Ogbo, Osun State and in Ibadan, Oyo State,Mr. Pelumi Salas Aribisala is a successful young farmer.
The BSc. Microbiology graduate from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Aribisala, farms cassava and other crops.
Aribisala’s income is huge and certain. This is because he discovered the secret to a prosperous agro business. He belongs to online platforms including Agroshop that connects farmers to the agricultural supply and value chain and provides them with critical information on weather, market prices and incoming opportunities via text messages.
His strategy is to explore innovative ways to improve food production. If you walk past the fields, sometimes, you will find him using his smartphone to get market information. This helps him grow and sell his crops and it’s revolutionising his farming and marketing skills. With real-time information that the platform provides, he is able to make better decisions to adapt to climate variability by adjusting the planting time and making better use of fertiliser. The platforms significantly enhance his knowledge and productivity, ultimately leading to higher output and prosperity.
Sometimes, cassava prices shot up and Aribisala taps into the situation by exploring the market through his smart phone to get better prices.
According to analysts, the greatest impact digital agriculture will have is on democratisation of market pricing and compressing transaction costs so that farmers capture a higher portion of the produce marketable value.
For Aribisala, there is much in value at stake with inspiring innovations driving agricultural productivity and increasing participation.
Through data devices and online platforms, Aribisala gets crucial information on disease outbreak, improved seeds, fertiliser, and pesticides, weather changes, and the current market prices for produce. This, not only helps farmers like him turn out greater yields, but also cuts off the exploitation of farmers by middlemen via making them to be aware of fair market prices.
For watchers, a big wave of transformation is coming to the agric industry from data science. This is helping farmers get the best from farming. Updates and reliable information sent to individual farmers’ mobile phones supported many farmers to increase their productivity.
In the last three years, a slew of big-data startups are empowering farmers to plan operations, from sowing to predicting crop yields. One of the companies is Probityfarms. The company has developed an App that will connect farmers and broaden knowledge base of stakeholders in the sector.
Co-founder and CEO of Probityfarms, Mr. Olushola Ogunniyi, explained that the new technology is a simple-to-use farm management app to help farmers manage both the day-to-day activities of the farm and even the business-side of their operations. Farmers, he said, can use the application throughout the value chain of all farming activities.
Ogunniyi said: “We understand that there are two sides to running successful farming; the business side and the technical side. However, many farmers today lack the professional and business skills needed to manage these two farm operations successfully.
“With Probity Farms, our pilot farmers depended on our simple dashboard to solve these important needs. After creating their farm profiles, they can easily capture all activities on the farm, from crop production, livestock production and farm economics.
“The tools enable them to measure and track every activity in the farm, thereby enabling the farmer to plan better and make sound decision and not just guess work or native intelligence. They also utilise the platform to communicate, learn, share knowledge, and build their relationship with other farmers.”
Giving further insight into the App, he said the solution was divided into seven core offerings based on an assessment of the needs of small holder farmers.
Also, he said the App has the ability to help determine test and analysis, saying a very affordable hardware is being currently developed with their partners to evaluate the soil condition for the 13 nutrients required for plant growth, water, sunlight, among others, and analyses the data in order to understand the appropriate nutrient to apply to improve farm yields.
From precision farming to an efficient food supply chain, technology is bringing tremendous economic benefits to the sector. An application changing the face of Nigerian agriculture is Zenvus. Zenvus application was developed by Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe, international scholar and founder of African Institution of Technology. The application measures and analyses soil data such as temperature, nutrients, and vegetative health. It helps farmers apply the right fertiliser and optimally irrigate their farms. The process improves farm productivity and reduces input waste by using analytics to facilitate data-driven farming practices for small-scale farmers.
Describing the technology, Ekekwe said: “Our product , Zenvus, is an intelligent solution for farms that use proprietary electronics sensors to collect soil data like moisture, nutrients, pH, among others, and send them to a cloud server via GSM, satellite or Wifi. Algorithms in the server analyse the data and advise farmers on their farming processes like when to apply fertiliser, the type of fertiliser required or when to irrigate the farm.
As the crops grow, the system deploys special cameras to build vegetative health of crops which is then used to detect drought stress, pest and diseases on crops. “Another innovator is Farmcrowdy. Farmcrowdy, an agric tech company,unveiled a digital application that is empowering farmers across the country. The Chief Executive Officer Farmcrowdy, Onyeka Akumah, said the organisation decided to create a digital platform to get many people on the programme to understand agriculture and its benefits.
Akumah disclosed that the application connects small scale farmers and sponsors investors’ who are ready to produce more food for the country. The platform focuses on assisting them with the latest farming techniques and funds to make their lives more meaningful.
Speaking with The Nation, the Executive Director, Agricultural and Rural Management Training Institute(ARMTI), Dr Olufemi Oladunni, said agriculture in Nigeria has many gaps that can be filled by the new wave of agri-tech startups. From improving seed quality to enabling accurate information, he said the sector needs technology to change the face of Nigerian agriculture. He noted that using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) helps farmers to get timely information on agricultural advisories, agricultural marketing and improve their capacity and mitigate risks. According to him, the government realised the enormous potential that technology has to boost the agricultural sector with the inauguration of the Growth Enhancement Scheme(GES). He said there should be digital solutions to help experts and farmers in the rural areas take numbers, analyse them with soil structures, crop patterns and provide the government with accurate data. Oladunni believes agriculture is a data-intense enterprise when one considers soil variability, moisture and nutrient levels, rainfall variability, timing of key operations like planting and harvesting, and market price volatility.Oladunni believes technology will be key to increasing agricultural productivity by delivering tailored recommendations to farmers based on crop, planting date,variety sown, real-time, localised observed weather and projected market prices.
The challenge, however, is that the sector lacks rural infrastructure to support the implementation of digital agriculture in areas where farmers live. Digital agriculture, experts said, is sustained by Spatial and Data Infrastructure (SDI) and low-cost smart phones and tablets to support the bi-directional flow of data and information to rural consumers
By: DANIEL ESSIET
The Nation News
