Boost for Ethiopian farmers as Techno Brain inks deal with local firm

More than 100,000 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia will now be able to use technology to boost yield and access market more easily following the launch of a revolutionary digital platform.

Technology firm, Techno Brain Group has signed a partnership with Ethiopian based Green Agro solutions PLC to provide the digital agriculture insights to the smallholder farmers in Arsi Zone of Ethiopia to help decision based precision agriculture informative insights.

The Group said its Digital Agriculture Platform will help farmers improve crop yields, increase quality and access to markets as well as beef up income.

African smallholder farmers who are largely reliant on rain-fed agriculture are the most vulnerable to impacts of climate change. Apart from insufficient rain, disease and pest epidemics also make a huge challenge for the farmers.

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 supplies farm inputs and mechanization service to more than 20,000 smallholder farmers in Arsi Zone of Ethiopia.

In the new partnership, Techno Brain will provide a range of farming insights to farmers via Green Agro Solution for next 3 years. The farmers will receive relevant information on 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.

Techno Brain Group Managing Director for Digital Business Anand Mohan said the information to be shared to the farmers via short message service (SMS) and interactive voice (IVR) platforms will help them improve yields by up to 20 percent.

“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 percent using data, analytics, and instant communication, “Mr Mohan said.
The farmers will have their digital profiles mapped in what Green Agro Solution Managing Director Abrham Endrias believes make the most economical approach to boost yiels for smallholder farmers in Africa.

The firm also hopes to leverage on it many years of experience in dealing with farmers in the region to make the innovative a success.

“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,” Mr Endrias said.

Techno Brain which also operates in the US, India, the UAE and 20 other countries, was the first indigenous African company to achieve the highest quality standards for software development.

The firm’s Ethiopia Country Director said increased production by the farmers was a vital guarantee for food security in the region.