A WhatsApp-like app for the tech-savvy farmer
By Nilesh Christopher. Reblogged from The Economic Times of India. Before the start of the next crop planting season, third generation farmer Krishna Balegayi – who has been farming for 25 years – is sure to take the help of an Android app to better his yield. Bangalore-based startup Nubesol technologies has created a WhatsApp-like…
Calibration is the key
Do farmers know how to calibrate their sprayer so they are mixing the right amount of pesticide with water to spray their crops? When we asked the Basooka Kwavula farmer group from Wakiso district in Central Uganda, we found that not many of them do. They all saw the process as complicated and even if…
Scientists discover new crop-destroying Armyworm is now “spreading rapidly” in Africa
New research announced today by scientists at CABI confirms that a recently introduced crop-destroying armyworm caterpillar is now spreading rapidly across Mainland Africa and could spread to tropical Asia and the Mediterranean in the next few years, becoming a major threat to agricultural trade worldwide.
Bringing financial services to smallholder farmers
Financial inclusion has made considerable progress in recent years. There are now a wide range of financial products which can help small farmers: debt financing, short term working capital to finance purchasing of inputs, long term working capital to finance machinery, equity and factoring. Whereas banks used not to want to go the ‘last mile’,…
Good growth relies on good seeds
Seeds are the unsung heroes of agriculture, and modern varieties provide beneficial traits such as drought tolerance and cooking quality. Some varieties are even designed to provide a platform with which to provide other products, such as seed treatments conferring additional insect and disease protection. The lack of modern varieties, particularly in developing countries, is…
Game changers: digital agriculture and new technologies
ICTs play a pivotal role in facilitating solutions for smallholder farmers and the markets they are trying to access. For GLOBALG.A.P., the world’s leading farm assurance program, the only way to make the auditing of the 160,000 farms it covers economically viable is through technological solutions. CABI’s Plantwise programme also relies on ICTs for collecting…
Land ownership and consolidation: a major challenge for smallholders
The issue of land ownership and reform is one of the biggest challenges facing agriculture in Africa and other emerging economies. Land ownership is a key driver of investment in agricultural production. Without title to land or even an address, farmers’ access to credit and insurance can be limited. Land sales are prohibited in China…
Who are the world's small farmers?
It is commonly believed that there are around 500 million small farms – defined as being less than 2 hectares – in the world. The conventional wisdom is that the number of small farms is increasing whilst farm sizes are getting smaller, and this trend will continue for 20-30 years. However there is a paucity of…
The future of small farms in a rapidly changing world
On 24-25 January 2017, CABI and the Syngenta foundation for sustainable agriculture hosted a conference at the Syngenta conference centre in Basel, Switzerland. The conference, entitled “The Future of Small Farms”, covered a broad range of topics aimed at assessing the state of agricultural policy in developing economies and emerging markets, and its influence on…
New device can detect crop pathogens by smell
By Philippa Merry. Reblogged from The Courier. Dubbed an E-Nose, the equipment has been developed by engineers and scientists to detect crop pathogens by smell weeks before any infection becomes outwardly apparent or evident on any visual basis. “It’s an amazing tool for early detection,” commented Kit Franklin, a lecturer of agricultural engineering at Harper…