Techno Brain Group, a digital solutions company, signed a partnership deal with Ethiopian based Green Agro solutions PLC to provide digital agriculture insights to over a hundred thousand smallholder farmers in Arsi Zone of Ethiopia. The technology aims to help the farmers make decisions based on precision agriculture informative insights.
This Techno Brain’s Digital Agriculture Platform hopes to help farmers improve crop yields, increase quality of produce, increase access to markets and, eventually, income. To do so, the platform collects and organizes data based on farm location obtained from Global Positioning System (GPS). It then analyzes the data along with crop life cycle, seed details, land type, soil nutrition and expected rainfall and weather patterns, to provide valuable insights that can help the farmers reach well informed farming decisions.
The Ethiopia-based Green Agro Solutions promotes “one-stop farming solution” which provides farming inputs and mechanization services to over twenty thousand smallholder farmers in Arsi, Ethiopia. Green Agro Solutions will receive a range of farming insights from Techno Brain for the coming three years via text messages and interactive voice platforms. The insights include: 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.
Abraham Endrias, Managing Director of Green Agro Solution said, “If you see the agriculture world, especially in Africa, transformation to digital farming resulting improved yield and low cost of farm operation. 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.”
Anand Mohan, Managing Director for Digital Business at Techno Brain group, for his part, remarked, “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% using data, analytics, and instant communication.”
Mekonnen Tesfaye, Country Director for Techno Brain Ethiopia said, “If we increase productivity by 15-25% using such technologies not only will the country be able to feed its population but also save millions of dollars in foreign currency from importation of grains. I am excited and look forward to hear from farmers witnessing what the new technology means to them.”
Smallholder farmers are the most vulnerable to impacts of climate change, with rain-fed agriculture accounting for more than 90 percent of farmed land in sub-Saharan Africa.
Source: EABW Digital
