The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ( CTA ) is informing the community that it has established a supporting centre for drone operations in Benin, DRC, Ghana, Tanzania and Uganda . CTA is partnering with a French Company Airinov in this project. Drones are also called the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and are used in the management of crops, fisheries, forests and other natural resource-based activities within farming activities. This is possible as drones are equipped with high resolution cameras to facilitate advanced crop research using remote-sensed data . Airinov...
OpenForis is a free open-source software for environmental monitoring. It consist in a set of free and open-source software tools that facilitates flexible and efficient data collection, analysis and reporting. Open Foris includes: Collect: Easy and flexible survey design and data management Collect Mobile: Intuitive data collection and validation in the field Collect Earth: Innovative land assessment through freely available satellite imagery Calc: Efficient and collaborative data analysis and results dissemination Geospatial Toolkit: Powerful command-line utilities for processing geospatial...
The World Summit Awards announced its 40 winners of 2016 selected out of 451 submissions. The different winners represent a diversity of innovating mobile applications from around the world and accross different sectors: health, education, refugees, culture and of course agriculture. Among the 40 selected submissions there are a few specific agriculture oriented applications. Click on the links to learn more about the different projects. Farmdrive : Farmdrive unlocks financial services for over 50 million smallholder farmers in Africa. Farmdrive aims at closing the information gap that keeps...
The forum discussion on The Role of ICTs in Sustainable Crop Production Intensification (SCPI) of horticulture crop based systems ( mainly on fruits, vegetables, roots and tubers) is still on-going. Below we provide the summaries for the second week, you can read the summaries for the first week here . The question for week 2 was:- Do you have any concrete examples of successful use of ICTs in sustainable intensification of horticulture crop based systems? Summary of participation As envisaged, this was yet another interesting and exciting week of learning, a number of promising and...
Congolese horticultural farmers learn how to produce quality vegetables required by supermarkets. They receive information on the rational use of plant protection products, composting and horticultural practices through various ICTs. A few organizations in the country are using ICTs to provide farmers with climate or marketing advice. These include CIAAD, CSAYN and CARITAS. The rural radio (RTNC), for example, in collaboration with two of its partners in the broadcasting system, supports the production of an interactive radio series, every morning from 5:30 am to 6:00 am. The objective was to...
2017 EFITA WCCA Congress Date July 2nd - 6th, 2017 Location Montpellier Supagro school Description Many initiatives such as invited workshops and sessions and internal meetings come together within EFITA conference to make Montpellier the place to go in July when it comes to ICT for agri-food,...
A recent article by Business Insider points out that Internet of Things (IoT) is on the rise in agriculture. The current world population of 7.3 billion is expected to reach 9.7 billion in 2050, according to the UN . The world will consequantly need to produce 70% more food in 2050 than it did in 2006 in order to feed the growing population of the Earth, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN. Farmers will need to turn to new technologies to meet the growing demand for food production in the world. Internet of Things is the internetworking of physical devices that have...
Nano Ganesh - a mobile based remote control for water pumps and water tanks - developed by the Ossian Agro Automation , will be demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress , Barcelona, Spain, taking place from February 27th to March 2nd 2017. The electronic device will be part of the Mobile for Development in the Innovation City in the Mobile World Congress. GSMA has constructed a small grass plot irrigated by sprinklers controlled live by visitors with a mobile phone with the help of Nano Ganesh device. Nano Ganesh is a GSM Mobile based remote control system exclusively for the use with water...
After a two-year ban of unmanned aereal vehicles for non-military reasons in Kenya, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) has approved draft regulations on the commercial use of drones in the country. The law will be released soon, according to governemnt officials. Kenya is the second African nation after Rwanda to grant the permission to fly drones for commercial use. An article released in May 2016 by the Daily Nation newspaper, Kenya's largest, reported that more than 1,000 applicants were already seeking regulatory approvals to operate drone-based transport services in Kenya. Among...
Agricultural insurance is essential for smallholder farmers, as plots of land are small and the consequences of crop diseases and climate change effects can be disastrous. Yeld loss and damage monitoring and verification can be long and laborious task, causing huge delays in settlements. Although new technologies have been applied, drones, micro-satellites, digital photography can help improve the monitoring of crops and yelds for smallholders and insurance companies. Remote sensing can be a key tool for farmers to prove their crop and harvest loss to insurance companies. At the same time,...
2017 EFITA WCCA Congress Date July 2nd - 6th, 2017 Location Montpellier Supagro school Description Many initiatives such as invited workshops and sessions and internal meetings come together within EFITA conference to make Montpellier the place to go in July when it comes to ICT for agri-food,...