• SmartAgro Project with FAO and Telefonica working towards Goals 2 and 10

#SDGAction42913

Description

Intro

SmartAgro uses Internet of Things, Big Data, and digital education tools to improve agricultural productivity, food security, and rural nutrition options. It is being carried out in the municipality of Ventaquemada, Boyacá, in a rural county of the municipality, in the framework of a wider global agreement between Telefónica and FAO.

Objective of the practice

The broad agreement between FAO and Telefónica seeks to promote the development and implementation of innovation initiatives, data entry and analysis in the agricultural sector, to promote the development of agriculture, food security and nutrition in developing countries. This association places special emphasis on the need to provide concrete support to local rural - agrarian communities in accessing information. Using innovative technology allows us to respond jointly to a huge challenge in the fight against hunger and the effects of climate variability in agriculture. Our farmers will have access to information that allows them to make the best decisions in their crops contributing to protect crops and production systems. Innovation reaches the Colombian countryside, in areas with high demands, where a diversity of factors and key actors in environmental sustainability and rural development converge. With this technological project the inhabitants of Ventaquemada will be able to make decisions regarding the risks, protection and adaptation of their lands, by means of a software in the cloud it allows to store the data collected by the sensors, the meteorological station and the soil humidity probe , offering the farmer recommendations to optimize their sowing and cultivation.

Partners

• The key partnership has been between Telefonica and FAO, which are the two institutional partners, along with the farmers' associoation of San Jose Del Gacal county (ASOPSAG), who have been the beneficiaries and implementing partners. ASOPSAG was chosen as an implementing partner in this case because they are facing generational turnover and thus are in a good position to integrate new practices and techonology into the agricultural production process. Other key partners have been Maser and Instacrops, who have provided the IoT equipment and the data visualising interface. All partners have actively participated in every step of the project.

Implementation of the Project/Activity

Once Colombia was selected as a site for a project in the IoT line of the global FAO-Telefónica project, there were several steps of consultation and validation with technical and agricultural experts in order to identify the communities and crops that would be most pertinent for a pilot program. Once the pilot programs were selected, the teams carried out on-the-ground validation and connectivity checks. The pilot program started implementation in October of 2018, when the team installed one meteorological station, two ground humidity probes, and connected them to the data analytics platform and the visualization interface. The data analytics platform generates irrigation recommendations based on weather patterns and soil characteristics, in order to maintain the potato crops at optimum irrigation and optimize the use of water reservoirs. FAO agricultural experts periodically monitor the implementation of the program, and now that the harvest season has started, the FAO experts are also monitoring the crops and carrying out year-over-year comparisons on the quality and size of the potato crops in order to measure any impacts in productivity.

Results/Outputs/Impacts

The prelimiray results have been promising, with observable improvements in the yield and quality of the crops. This has had a significant impact on the income of the producers, which has increased from a loss of 1% to a profit of between 24% and 86% of production costs (data will be more precise as the harvest season progresses and the crops continue to be sold). As this is a program designed with and for a producers’ cooperative, in its core it is designed to leave no-one behind. Spill-overs so far have not been studied.

Sustainability and replicability

Two more pilots are planned in Colombia, and Perú and El Salvador are already carrying out similar projects. Because this project includes expert and community input, its design should be replicable in a wide variety of places, and the increased income and food security that the improved yields and quality have generated should make the project economically sustainable in the medium term.

SDGS & Targets