Data-Led Soil Management for Low Income Farmers

Soil degradation is ‘recognised, alongside climate change, as one of the most pressing problems facing humanity’ and disproportionately impacts smallholder farmers in developing countries who lack tools to combat it (FAO,2015). Farming practices can improve soil quality & increase soil carbon, but to implement these, farmers need tools to monitor relevant metrics and transform data into action via decision support systems. Climate Edge (CE) has already developed a low-cost agricultural weather station to monitor environment data (temp, leaf wetness, etc.) which is fed back to farmers via a web platform. Through farmer interactions, CE has learned the frustrations faced when measuring/managing soil. Lab results are costly, slow & untrustworthy, and farmers get little guidance on how to interpret data & implement solutions. CE will use this project to integrate soil management into its offering to improve yields/restore soil carbon. Affordable in-field soil testing kits will be deployed on farms in Kenya and the data will be input into CE’s web platform to provide advice and inputs (e.g.fertiliser) to farms. The project will increase CE’s competitiveness by enabling it to develop a more holistic solution to help low-income farmers adapt to climate change & mitigate soil degradatio