It is ironic that as an agriculture-based economy, we are yet to
really direct our ICT capabilities towards the agricultural sector.
Today
the typical Kenyan farmer owns one or two acres inherited from their
parents, and practices similar farming techniques to those introduced
before independence.
This typical Kenyan farmer has
worked very hard to educate his or her children, who are currently stuck
in white-collar jobs or roaming the streets of many rural towns as boda boda riders.
Either
way, none of these children takes farming seriously. After all, that
was the mantra while going school; study hard in order to get a good job
and escape the farm.
And so the country finds itself
in a vicious cycle, where future generations gain knowledge in order to
escape farming, and in so doing, leave the farmland to its own
rudimentary devices, with ever diminishing returns.
Our
leading agricultural institutions such as Egerton University and JKUAT
have diversified so much that their original agricultural focus remains
only on paper. Clearly, transformation of our agricultural sector is
likely to come from other quarters.
The agricultural
sector requires a transformative intervention, the same way our banking
sector was disrupted by mobile technology.
We need non-agricultural forces to come in and disrupt the status quo that has seen farming practices remain rudimentary.
The
farmer’s routine typically revolves around tilling the land,
fertilising, planting, waiting for the rain, cultivating the crop and
months later harvesting it. Thereafter, he or she stores the harvest and
waits for brokers who connect farmers to the markets. This routine has
remained the same for the majority of farmers, with little or no
intervention of affordable technology.
While several mobile applications that connect farmers to the market have been created, very little innovation has been seen at the earlier stages of the farming value chain.
For
example, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be deployed to map
out soil composition in all parts of the country. This information
should be made available, through mobile phones, to guide farmers
regarding what seeds or fertilisers are appropriate for their specific
location.
There is really no reason why farmers should
continue growing maize when perhaps their soil type would yield better
returns if they grew beans.
Another possible
intervention point for technology is the fertiliser distribution
process. It is common knowledge in farming communities that the brokers
involved in distributing subsidised government fertiliser often become overnight millionaires.
However,
behind each overnight millionaire, there are several thousands of
farmers getting either wrong, insufficient or substandard fertiliser.
Perhaps
it maybe better to have the private sector distribute fertiliser by
issuing mobile money vouchers to farmers, who can then redeem them at
their supplier of choice. The idea is to disrupt the entrenched
distribution cartels, while introducing competition within the
fertiliser value chain.
One other area
begging for technology intervention is the agricultural extension
process. The typical agricultural extension officer makes random, rare
visits to the farmers, supposedly offering technical agricultural
advice.
Why not flip this around and use the
“self-service” paradigm, where farmers can reach the extension officers
as and when they need to? A simple, user-friendly portal, either text or
web-driven, should allow farmers to engage agricultural officers on a
24/7 basis.
Crowd-sourcing of farmers is another
technological possibility. Electronically getting together one thousand
farmers, each having one acre of farmland, suddenly yields one thousand
acres of farmland. Synchronising them opens up opportunities to share
input costs and other variables, and benefit from economies of scale.
Unless
we transform farming with modern, disruptive technologies it will
continue being done the same way it was done decades ago, with
increasingly diminishing returns.
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