Leading digital solutions company, Techno Brain Group has signed a partnership with Ethiopian-based Green Agro Solutions PLC to provide digital agriculture insights to 100,000+ smallholder farmers in Arsi Zone of Ethiopia to help decision based precision agriculture informative insights.
This Techno Brain’s Digital Agriculture Platform is used to help farmers improve crop yields, increase its quality, increase access to markets and income. Smallholder farmers are the most vulnerable to impacts of climate change, with rain-fed agriculture accounting for more than 90% of farmed land in sub-Saharan Africa. These farmers face many risks beyond their control, including drought, disease and pest epidemics.
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 promotes “one-stop farming solution” providing farm inputs and mechanisation service to 20,000+ smallholder farmers in the country’s Arsi Zone.
Techno Brain will provide a range of farming insights to farmers via Green Agro Solution for next three years via short message service (SMS) and interactive voice (IVR) platforms including; 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.
Anand Mohan, Managing Director for Digital Business at Techno Brain, said: “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.”
Abrham 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.”
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 “
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