22 January 2019 – The CABI-partnered ‘Seeing is Believing’ project, which empowers farmers with smartphone imaging, is going ‘under the microscope’ on Thursday (24 January 2019) as part of a special Facebook Live Q&A event.
Dr Berber Kramer, Applied Microeconomist at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) who partner with CABI on the CGIAR Inspire Challenge Grant-funded project, will be answering questions on the innovative scheme at 9am Washington DC time or 2pm GMT.
To take part in the event follow CGIAR Big Data’s Facebook page and enable alerts for live events.
CABI and IFPRI landed the prestigious $250,000 Inspire Challenge 2018 Scale Up award last October to push forward with the project which helps farmers in India use their own smartphone photographs of their crops to optimize their agronomic decision-making.
CABI and IFPRI’s winning entry whereby the use of farmers’ self-collected camera data to provide agricultural services is unprecedented. The aim of the service is to provide personalised agricultural advice not only based on localized information but also on visible crop characteristics derived from a stream of farmers’ own smartphone pictures.
Arun Jadhav, CABI’s Project Manager -Mobile, said, ‘Many smallholder farmers rely on inefficient agricultural practices that are insufficiently adaptive to climate change.’
‘Customized agricultural advice for specific crops grown by a farmer, based on localized weather and soil data, pests and diseases, as well as input availability can improve management practices, productivity and profitability.
‘The ‘Seeing is Believing’ project’s use of real-time data from smartphone pictures will strengthen advice in four ways. This includes the fact that visible crop characteristics provide more information as well as the tangibility of a picture-based approach being more likely to increase ownership and take-up of the advice.’
Additional information
Read more about how the ‘Seeing is Believing’ project has been helping farmers in the northern Indian states of Haryana and Punjab improve their management practices, productivity and profitability.
Find out more about how CABI works with farmers, mobile operators, content providers, extension services and industry bodies to provide mobile services across the whole agricultural supply chain.
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