Tech in agriculture shouldn't stop at connecting farmers to markets

It is ironic that as an agriculture-based economy, we are yet to really direct our ICT capabilities towards the agricultural sector.  

Today the typical Kenyan farmer owns one or two acres inherited from their parents, and practices similar farming techniques to those introduced before independence.

This typical Kenyan farmer has worked very hard to educate his or her children, who are currently stuck in white-collar jobs or roaming the streets of many rural towns as boda boda riders.  

Either way, none of these children takes farming seriously. After all, that was the mantra while going school; study hard in order to get a good job and escape the farm.

And so the country finds itself in a vicious cycle, where future generations gain knowledge in order to escape farming, and in so doing, leave the farmland to its own rudimentary devices, with ever diminishing returns.

Our leading agricultural institutions such as Egerton University and JKUAT have diversified so much that their original agricultural focus remains only on paper. Clearly, transformation of our agricultural sector is likely to come from other quarters.

The agricultural sector requires a transformative intervention, the same way our banking sector was disrupted by mobile technology.

We need non-agricultural forces to come in and disrupt the status quo that has seen farming practices remain rudimentary.

The farmer’s routine typically revolves around tilling the land, fertilising, planting, waiting for the rain, cultivating the crop and months later harvesting it. Thereafter, he or she stores the harvest and waits for brokers who connect farmers to the markets. This routine has remained the same for the majority of farmers, with little or no intervention of affordable technology.

While several mobile applications that connect farmers to the market have been created, very little innovation has been seen at the earlier stages of the farming value chain.

For example, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be deployed to map out soil composition in all parts of the country. This information should be made available, through mobile phones, to guide farmers regarding what seeds or fertilisers are appropriate for their specific location.

There is really no reason why farmers should continue growing maize when perhaps their soil type would yield better returns if they grew beans.  

Another possible intervention point for technology is the fertiliser distribution process.  It is common knowledge in farming communities that the brokers involved in distributing subsidised government fertiliser often become overnight millionaires.

However, behind each overnight millionaire, there are several thousands of farmers getting either wrong, insufficient or substandard fertiliser.

Perhaps it maybe better to have the private sector distribute fertiliser by issuing mobile money vouchers to farmers, who can then redeem them at their supplier of choice. The idea is to disrupt the entrenched distribution cartels, while introducing competition within the fertiliser value chain.

One other area begging for technology intervention is the agricultural extension process. The typical agricultural extension officer makes random, rare visits to the farmers, supposedly offering technical agricultural advice.

Why not flip this around and use the “self-service” paradigm, where farmers can reach the extension officers as and when they need to? A simple, user-friendly portal, either text or web-driven, should allow farmers to engage agricultural officers on a 24/7 basis.

Crowd-sourcing of farmers is another technological possibility. Electronically getting together one thousand farmers, each having one acre of farmland, suddenly yields one thousand acres of farmland. Synchronising them opens up opportunities to share input costs and other variables, and benefit from economies of scale.

Unless we transform farming with modern, disruptive technologies it will continue being done the same way it was done decades ago, with increasingly diminishing returns.