Improving soybean production using innovative digital and extension approaches

"Our goal is to help at least 30,000 farmers, particularly women, successfully access a neglected food market so they can improve their livelihoods. We will do this through a novel blend of digitally-supported advisory services, trained community champions who can introduce fellow farmers to reliable merchants, plus the application of Space and ground technology which observe the environmental conditions that influence insect pest population explosions, and which can help us create medium term pest forecasts similar to equivalent weather forecasts.

Pests and diseases account for pre-harvest crop losses of up to 40% but advisory services help smallholder farmers cope in giving them actionable, timely, and geo-specific pest management information geared to the likely levels of infestation. Farmers who can afford pesticides often inadvertently spray environmentally damaging chemicals, potentially adding unnecessarily to their costs, or use excessive amounts at the wrong time. For those who can't afford such treatments, they can be at the mercy of pest outbreaks which threaten livelihoods and create food losses. In this project we bring together: (a) an existing and effective advisory service (Plantwise), extended from rural to peri-urban farmers, to help women grow and sell soybean crops into urban food systems; (b) a network of up to 300 village extension advisors to teach fellow farmers how to manage pests and supply quality beans safely, without pesticide residues, to food processors; (c) a ground-breaking service for these advisors, providing geo- and time-specific forward-looking alerts of insect pest outbreaks created via sophisticated models, derived from satellite remote sensing and ground data observations, so farmers can tell in enough time when they'll be faced with a pest problem, and how best to cope with it; and (d) a financial safety net for farmers comprised of credit (to buy inputs), picture-based pest insurance schemes (to validate claims against a new type of crop - pest - insurance, so they can recover in the event of devastating pest invasions), and guaranteed purchase prices from a food processor. We have chosen soybean for its high nutritional benefit to consumers, its high-value financial rewards to growers, and its great potential in meeting domestic demand for a crop which currently has to be imported across Africa."