The Role Of Mobile Phones in Climate Smart Agriculture
Using technology 📱to increase productivity
As exciting as it sounds, mobile phones have had a big impact on the farming operations in the world of today.
Climate Change has been a serious challenge facing Agricultural production since it has led to the reduction of crop yields, the nutritional quality of major cereals, and lowering of livestock productivity. However, the smartphone agriculture has and/or is improving the lives of smallholder farmers in Kenya by providing open access to robust farming techniques and new agricultural information that is sustainable, empowering and resourceful.
Mobile phones have demonstrated their suitability to address the issue of the existing information asymmetry , hence knowledge gap between large and small scale farmers and across gender about the latest technologies and best agricultural practices is reduced.
There are rich benefits accrued from using smartphones in climate smart farming, that have led to the maintenance of current yields and the achievement of high production and food quality increase inorder to meet demand.
A few among many benefits are the following:
Identifying Pests & Diseases
Farmers usually encounter pests and crop diseases that are new to them. But with a smartphone in their hand, they can click a picture of the ailing plants and send it across to scientists thousands of miles away. These specialists could then help them to identify the pests and also provide a solution in a matter of hours if not minutes.
There are also apps that have been developed to identify pests and diseases. For example, The Fall Armyworm Monitoring and Early Warning System (FAMEWS) mobile app provides valuable insights on how the insect changes over time and space to improve knowledge of its behavior .This information is quite helpful to the farmers, and it would help them and guide in the best response to tackle the pest.
Better accessibility of Information
Most farmers have specialized tools and use them on a daily basis. Like the tractors for ploughing, the disk harrows, the irrigation equipment, pesticide application tools like the knapsack sprayers, or the hand sprayers and many others. Any glitch in these tools can bring their day-to-day work to a complete halt. Armed with smartphones the farmers would not only be able to seek help from technicians but also give them the exact reason for the problem with the help of video calling apps.
The Farmers can also seek information on on Crop Production, Crop Protection, smart farming with agriculture in addition the farmers are able to access information on Crop Advisory, Soil Testing, Drone Services, Weather and the Future Climate expectations among many others. The farmers are able to know in advance based on their locations, the times, condition & Temperature of the future weather information through mobile apps like the the AgriApp , Krish- App and many others.
Skipping the middleman
There are many mobile apps like the Mkulima Young, that can track the local commodity prices in real time. This would help them inform their decision on what prices they can set to sell their produce.
Before most farmers had access to mobile phones, they would harvest theire crops and then had to wait for a trader to buy their produce but currently farmers are able to communicate to traders who are miles away, through various mobile apps like facebook, instagram and other social media channels. In addition, they can also use the same apps in advertising their produce and get buyers in real time without the help of brokers.
The information on current market prices can also help them in deciding the crop that would maximize their profits.
Knowledge-Sharing
Farmers usually deploy some unique techniques to get the best yield from specific crops. However, with no platform to document their knowledge, they are not able to share valuable information with others. However, they are now able to join online discussion forums and share their knowledge with others through their mobile phones.
