Saturday, February 27, 2021
  • Home
  • News
  • Agribusiness
  • Markets
  • Machinery
  • Technology
  • Livestock
  • Poultry
  • Fisheries
  • Fruits
  • Climate Change
No Result
View All Result
No Result
View All Result
No Result
View All Result

The Bots Are Here—and They’re Protecting Our Crops

Mthokozisi by Mthokozisi
September 3, 2019
in Africa, Agribusiness, Business, Editor Picks, Featured, Food Security, International, News, Technology, Top Stories
0
The Bots Are Here—and They’re Protecting Our Crops

Armed with AI-equipped smartphones, African farmers should be able to detect and deal   with potato viruses before they get out of hand.

Whether it’s our jobs, our privacy or our democracies, artificial intelligence and smart technology often seem to pose nothing but threats. But one “threat” we should welcome from the effects of machine learning and new technology is the disruption of pests and diseases that attack crops, cause food shortages and contribute to famines worldwide.

Rapid strides in open-source digitization mean we have the tools to equip farmers with intelligent systems that can identify pests and pathogens, allowing them to take action long before any losses occur.

This revolutionary use of technology arms smallholder farmers, who are increasingly gaining digital know-how, with the means to identify quickly and accurately when their crop is under threat, and how best to combat that threat.

With the agriculture sector estimated to lose around $540 billionworldwide in damage from invasive pests and diseases each year, and with climate change contributing to the rise and spread of new challenges to healthy crops, global food security will depend on the adoption of these new digital tools.

This means making them accessible, affordable and comprehensible to the millions of smallholder farmers responsible for up to 90 percent of food production in developing countries.

With this in mind, I’ve been working with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and PlantVillage at Penn State University to develop a smartphone application that gives farmers real-time diagnoses of crop disease, using AI algorithms trained with images of diseased crops.

The PlantVillage app, for example, is being trained to detect diseases in sweet potato, which is a hugely important crop in sub-Saharan Africa. Potato blight alone is estimated to cause annual losses of $5 billion, with potato and sweet potato farmers in developing countries losing up to 60 per cent of their yields to pests.

Farmers don’t need much technical knowledge or literacy to use the app; they simply point a phone at the infested crop and the app will provide an accurate diagnosis using the talking AI assistant, Nuru.

Sweet potato feathery mottle virus and sweet potato chlorotic stunt virus, for instance, are the most common viral diseases affecting sweet potato; they can reduce yields by half, and in severe cases by up to 100 percent.

The symptoms of these viruses are often difficult for farmers to discern, which means they regularly go untreated. But through machine learning trained with confirmed symptoms of infection, AI would be able to draw upon its archive of all possible signs to recognize the diseases and help farmers take earlier action to save their crops.

This kind of technology has already shown promising results in tackling crop pests such as fall armyworm, an invasive caterpillar native to the Americas that spread to Africa in 2016 and has now reached Asia, causing huge losses to maize crops.

PlantVillage for example, has been adopted by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and monitors the spread of the voracious caterpillar in around 70 countries. It uses the Nuru talking app along with machine learning and AI to immediately confirm to a farmer whether fall armyworm is damaging their crops. It then provides information on how to stop the pest while providing a real-time view of infestations across maps of Africa for other app subscribers.

Beyond pests and disease, new satellite technologies can also help assess the productivity of crops and water availability to guide farmers in their planting decisions.

Satellites can provide accurate data to suggest where crops might be best placed to optimize production or to prepare more adequately for extreme weather such as droughts and floods.

For a smallholder farmer, this kind of knowledge can be the difference between persevering and prospering in the face of changing conditions that bring new and emerging threats.

To make such innovations widely available to all of the farmers who need them most worldwide, then, we need significant and long-term investment because regardless of the power of the technology, it remains redundant without constant promotion, training, updating, maintenance and expert support of the system.

But while the world is facing unprecedented global challenges, never before have we been so well-equipped to tackle them. The Fourth Industrial Revolution can be the moment the world uses technology as a force for good to tackle global hunger, malnutrition and inequality.

Source: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-bots-are-here-mdash-and-theyre-protecting-our-crops/

 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)

Related

Previous Post

Global Precision Farming Market to grow 14.7% CAGR by 2026

Next Post

WHY THE ISSUE OF FOOD WASTE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER

Mthokozisi

Mthokozisi

Related Posts

PERRY OPENS NEW OFFICE & TRAINING FACILITY IN UGANDA
Featured

PERRY OPENS NEW OFFICE & TRAINING FACILITY IN UGANDA

by Mthokozisi
February 9, 2021
0

  Perry of Oakley Ltd., a British company with a 73 year heritage in the design, manufacture and installation of...

Read more
VIRTO GROUP once again chooses TOMRA and renews the equipment at its main plant with eleven Nimbus BSI+ sorters

VIRTO GROUP once again chooses TOMRA and renews the equipment at its main plant with eleven Nimbus BSI+ sorters

January 13, 2021
SKF South Africa secures local agri customer’s aftermarket business for combine header gathering chain

SKF South Africa secures local agri customer’s aftermarket business for combine header gathering chain

January 13, 2021
SKF South Africa secures local agri customer’s aftermarket business for combine header gathering chain

SKF South Africa secures local agri customer’s aftermarket business for combine header gathering chain

January 13, 2021
Massey Ferguson MF 8S.265 Dyna E-Power Exclusive wins Tractor of the Year 2021

Massey Ferguson MF 8S.265 Dyna E-Power Exclusive wins Tractor of the Year 2021

January 6, 2021
VALTRA G SERIES WINS TRACTOR OF THE YEAR 2021 BEST UTILITY AWARD

VALTRA G SERIES WINS TRACTOR OF THE YEAR 2021 BEST UTILITY AWARD

January 6, 2021
Next Post
WHY THE ISSUE OF FOOD WASTE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER

WHY THE ISSUE OF FOOD WASTE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVER

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Download Our latest Issue

Like Us On Facebook

Facebook Pagelike Widget

Follow Us on Twitter

Tweets by @@Agribiz_SADC

RSS MORE NEWS

  • FAO organized a workshop in Ouagadougou “AgrInvest - Enabling inclusive and efficient private sector investments in the Burkinabè agri-food systems”
    Download logoThe AgrInvest initiative of FAO aims at attracting private investments into agri-food systems aligned with the SDGs by leveraging public funds. Under AgrInvest, FAO is implementing the project “AgrInvest-Food Systems ” (AgrInvest-FS) to foster sustainable investments in agri-food systems in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Niger, which contribute to sustainable economic growth and boost rural […]
  • The African Development Bank: a strategic partner in developing resilience and sustainable energy in the Sahel region
    Download logoThe Sahel Alliance will hold its second general assembly in N'Djamena, Chad on Monday, 15 February 2021. The meeting will take place on the side-lines of a summit for the G5 Sahel countries— Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad—as well as France. The African Development Bank (www.AfDB.org) played an active role in the formation […]
  • R12.6 million in funding awarded to 17 of South Africa’s most promising Social Innovators
    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wITZdZL0pR0&w=854&h=480]Meat Naturally and Agricool Finance were awarded joint first place in the 10th Annual Social Innovation Awards, while Leafline Washable Sanitary Wear scooped first place in the Disability Empowerment Awards. All three winners were awarded R1.3 million in grant funding. A total amount of R12.6 million in grant funding and business development support was given […]
  • Joint communiqué on the critical desert locust situation and emergency response in Somalia
    On 3 February 2021, the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, Federal Government of Somalia, Federal member state (FMS) ministers from Jubaland, Hirshabelle and South West States, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) held a meeting in Mogadishu to deliberate and agree on immediate actions to address the critical desert locust situation in the […]
  • African Development Bank, FAO and South Sudan’s government ink protocols for $14 million grant to boost agricultural markets
    Download logoThe African Development Bank (www.AfDB.org) on Wednesday signed protocols to disburse a $14 million grant to the Government of South Sudan to boost agricultural markets in a project to be implemented by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The Agricultural Markets, Value Addition and Trade Development (AMVAT) project aims to enhance agricultural productivity […]
Facebook Twitter

About Us

SADC AGRIBUSINESS MAGAZINE

Sadc Agribusiness Magazine is Southern Africa's premier farming magazine which provides news updates and analysis of topical issues affecng large scale farming to smallholder farmers, agri-preneurs, investors, community leaders, Agric ministries, who believe in the strong role of agriculture in economic development and poverty alleviation.

Recent Posts

  • TOMRA Food launches Packhouse Academy, the fresh produce industry’s most comprehensive online learning resource
  • PERRY OPENS NEW OFFICE & TRAINING FACILITY IN UGANDA
  • VIRTO GROUP once again chooses TOMRA and renews the equipment at its main plant with eleven Nimbus BSI+ sorters
  • SKF South Africa secures local agri customer’s aftermarket business for combine header gathering chain
  • SKF South Africa secures local agri customer’s aftermarket business for combine header gathering chain

Weather

JOHANNESBURG WEATHER

© 2019 All Rights Reserved SADC Agribusiness Magazine

No Result
View All Result

© 2019 All Rights Reserved SADC Agribusiness Magazine

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Fill the forms bellow to register

All fields are required. Log In

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In