Digitizing agriculture: App helps Ethiopian food producers

DW (English)

A former farmer in Ethiopia is on a mission to boost the productivity of small-scale farmers through a mobile app and digital platform. They are the main food producers in Ethiopia, a country where food insecurity and malnutrition are a big concern.

Transcript

00:00Aznakesh Demisi from Ethiopia's Oromia region is one of the many farmers that Abrameh Andrias

00:07Buta is keen to help. He's the founder of a digital platform that helps smallholders

00:12tackle the many challenges they face. Lursha, or Farming in Amharic, is an app, but also

00:18offers in-person support from local agents.

00:24Agents are recruited from the community. They speak a farmer language. And farmers

00:30are not required to have a digital tool or not required to know any additional language.

00:36By their own language, the call agents provide a lot of support.

00:42Like many of the agri-tech start-ups on the rise across Africa, Lursha provides weather

00:46forecasts, soil analysis and disease warnings. The farmers and agents can also use it to

00:52get access to tools and machinery, seeds and advisory services.

00:57Based in Addis Ababa, founder Abrameh Andrias Buta is a former farmer himself and familiar

01:03with the range of obstacles they have to cope with. After two years as a farmer, he was

01:08bankrupt and determined to stop others suffering the same fate.

01:16I thought of providing multiple solutions within a single value chain so that the smallholder

01:20farmer at the end of the day become productive and also getting better income.

01:25Around 85% of Ethiopia's 105 million residents live in rural areas and the majority work

01:32in agriculture. Almost all the country's agricultural output is produced by smallholder

01:37farmers.

01:38There were times where our populations are struggling to feed themselves and also satisfy

01:45the market demand. But looking at the cultivable land, we have a very huge land, huge arable

01:52land with the potential to produce 200, 300 million tonnes of different agricultural commodities.

02:01So especially in the African context, we always pronounce farmers are very poor, but actually

02:07they are not poor. They lack a proper solution and they are always willing to pay for that

02:13proper solution.

02:15A widow who relies on farming to cover her family's needs as Nakesh Damisi is among

02:20those willing to pay a small share of every transaction with Lersha. She's one of more

02:25than 200,000 farmers using it, online via the app and offline through agents.

02:33She cultivates wheat, potato, barley and beans. The Lersha agent has told her that now is

02:40a good time to plant wheat.

02:44As well as advice, the service offers her facilitated access to loans.

02:53With access to financing services, I can buy better seeds and rent a tractor. I can also

02:59use a combine harvester. For renting machinery, I used to sell my produce to other farmers

03:06and buy it back later. Access to loans helps solve these problems.

03:13These services sound promising and there are more and more apps like Lersha claiming

03:17to help smallholder farmers increase their yields and incomes through digital and data

03:21driven means. But while these apps promise huge benefits, farmers should be aware of

03:27potential drawbacks.

03:31What's happening is that a lot of these farmers are signing up to these platforms and their

03:35data is being extracted from them and then being used to sell them products from these

03:41agribusiness companies. So, you know, seeds, like they are being sold seeds to a privatised

03:47corporate system. And at the same time, their data is being taken from them to be used by

03:53these companies, but also to be sold on to third parties like insurance companies, banks,

03:59NGOs, and none of this is known to them.

04:02Lersha indeed collects data from its users and says this helps them get access to loans.

04:11Young people need support in collecting more data about them, analysing the data and making

04:18them bankable by formal financial institutions. And we are convincing financial institutions

04:25to use the land title of their families, their mother, father and their neighbours. So by

04:31just having a small letter stating that my son can use my land, the banks are now offering

04:39finance to this young farmer.

04:41This is a questionable practice, according to some experts, and that's not their only

04:46criticism. Some farming apps lock farmers into dependencies, forcing them to buy their

04:51products such as inputs or fertiliser and sell the crops they yield at their prices.

04:58At the same time, you have these new laws that are coming into place, which are criminalising

05:03farmers from freely sharing their seeds and reproducing their seeds and sharing them amongst

05:10each other. So it really is a way to entrench a more corporate food system here on the continent.

05:18As agriculture goes digital, many experts and NGOs suggest using more open source tools

05:24instead of paid or proprietary apps. Still, as Nakesh Dhamisi trusts Lersha's data-driven

05:30support, it helps her make informed decisions and gives her access to new services.

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