More than 100,000 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia will now be
able to use technology to boost yield and access market more easily
following the launch of a revolutionary digital platform.
Technology
firm, Techno Brain Group has signed a partnership with Ethiopian based
Green Agro solutions PLC to provide the digital agriculture insights to
the smallholder farmers in Arsi Zone of Ethiopia to help decision based
precision agriculture informative insights.
The Group
said its Digital Agriculture Platform will help farmers improve crop
yields, increase quality and access to markets as well as beef up
income.
African smallholder farmers who are largely
reliant on rain-fed agriculture are the most vulnerable to impacts of
climate change. Apart from insufficient rain, disease and pest epidemics
also make a huge challenge for the farmers.
The
technology offered by Techno Brain will collate data; farm location
using crop life cycle, seed details, land type, soil nutrition, Global
Positioning System (GPS) coordinates, expected rainfall and weather
patterns, and process the information on intelligent cloud to create
insights that help the farmers make better farming decisions.
Ethiopia
based Green Agro solutions supplies farm inputs and mechanization
service to more than 20,000 smallholder farmers in Arsi Zone of
Ethiopia.
In the new partnership, Techno Brain will
provide a range of farming insights to farmers via Green Agro Solution
for next 3 years. The farmers will receive relevant information on best
methods to prepare the land, optimal sowing week, farm input
availability, pest growth alerts, adverse weather notices, preferred
harvesting time, market information and farming tips developed in
collaboration with other knowledge partners.
Techno
Brain Group Managing Director for Digital Business Anand Mohan said the
information to be shared to the farmers via short message service (SMS)
and interactive voice (IVR) platforms will help them improve yields by
up to 20 percent.
“We are glad that we found a right partner to reach farmers and
we are excited to kick start the project for the next crop cycle that
starts in May 2019. Our initial plan is to start with Malt Barley
farmers in Arsi Zone and gradually extend to other crops such as wheat
and to other regions as well. We expect to improve the yields by 15 to
20 percent using data, analytics, and instant communication, “Mr Mohan
said.
The farmers will have their digital profiles mapped in what Green Agro Solution Managing Director Abrham Endrias believes make the most economical approach to boost yiels for smallholder farmers in Africa.
The farmers will have their digital profiles mapped in what Green Agro Solution Managing Director Abrham Endrias believes make the most economical approach to boost yiels for smallholder farmers in Africa.
The firm also hopes to leverage on it many
years of experience in dealing with farmers in the region to make the
innovative a success.
“Leveraging on our previous
agribusiness experience, we are happy to partner with Techno Brain and
we will ensure farmers understand these value additions. We already
started creating farmers digital profile and plan to outreach an initial
group of 5,000 malt barley growing smallholder farmers in the first
season,” Mr Endrias said.
Techno Brain which also
operates in the US, India, the UAE and 20 other countries, was the first
indigenous African company to achieve the highest quality standards for
software development.
The firm’s Ethiopia Country
Director said increased production by the farmers was a vital guarantee
for food security in the region.
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