Plant Clinic

• Problem: Tanzania has a population of about 55millions and about 49 million people are farmers and 75% of these farmers are small scale producers. Despite of having big number of farmers yet the country has less than 20000 Agricultural Officers who are working very hard but yet they can not help farmers as one to one which makes many farmers produce less due to many agricultural challenges.
• Solution: Chamakids help farmers to access better extension services which will help them loose less and gain more and also get reliable markets of their products through an artificial intelligent app that uses machine learning though deep learning and natural language processing to provide personalized farming skills and market information where by producers and buyers will be connected through a platform. The app will perform trainings, monitor plants growth, advise on agrochemicals and pestcides issues, link farmers with buyers, and connect agricultural partners.

We are helping farmers get better extension services at a required time withought  dilay  because many farmers can not access extension services at their farm areas due to shortage of Agricultural services and also plant doctors and clinics as well. Problems like how to prepare farms, crop spacing, where to take the plants for inspection if they been affected, how soon can they get solutions of their problems for them to save their crops etc will be solved in this system Tanzania has about 49 million farmers of which 75% of them are small scale farmers while the country has less than 20000 Agricultural Officers. Because of this limited number of Agricultural Officers  farmers lack of enough extension services which cause them practice tradition farming system where they loose large amount of crops. Moreover even when they have harvested yet it is very difficult to get customers as required and some times middle men are taking chance to pay low prices to farmers while selling the same product to buyers at high prices, this makes farmers to remain poor while working  hard. This solution will also connect farmers with buyers directly with ought a necessity of using middle men

• The proposed solution is using chamakids App which uses machine learing and natural languages  to facilitate farmers training, like how to prepare farms depending on the crop type, where to get better seeds, identify crop diseases and what agrochemicals and organic chemicals to be used to treat the specific plant disease, how and when to apply pesticides or organic chemicals. Also the app will facilitate farmers get connected to buyers where by farmers will register their farm plots and plot sizes, with close monitoring buyers will be able to locate the plot, get a report how the crops were developed  to improve safety for consumers, the buyer when interested will place the order  using the app, the message  will be delivered direct to the farmer as well as the control station, the farmer will harvest only the required amount and submit it on the near by store for packaging, then the order will be delivered to the near by location in the neighbourhood where the customer has chosen. This will improve the livelihood of many farmers in the country.

• This solution will save farmers of different scales but especially small scale farmers who are the main food producers in the country and due shortage of Agricultural Officers, and poor accessibility issues to many farm plots, they are failing to get better extension services. Moreover because many small scale farmers are cultivating small pieces of lands and they harvest in little amounts they are also facing a challenge of getting buyers of their products without using middle men who usually pay low price to producers and sell at high price to consumers. This solution will facilitate producers and buyers connectivity and if needed at large quantities producers can join together through this app and sell their products together to meet the demand.
• We are working with small scale farmers of horticultural and cerial crops from Doma, Mahalaka, Kihondo, Magali, Mikuyu, Yowe, Chohero, Homboza and Manza villages to understand what challenges they are facing, what real is needed to make their life better through  agriculture. Also the solution will bring efficiency in getting the extension services and linking get market of their products. This solution will reduce the costs of transporting and hiring the extension officers to the particular farm.

• Small scale farmers in Tanzania are the main producers  of food crops in the country, many of these farmers are practicing subsistence farming with only depending on rain fed and organically cultivated for most of the cerial crops. Lack of better agricultural services is a big hindrance towards improved livelihood. Therefore the solution will facilitate farmers to produce more fresh products to reduce the dependence of industrial processed products which will improve not only the lives of producers  but also the health of consumers by consuming non-carbonised products. This will increase productivity and improve livelihood and also will eradicate hunger.

The current  agricultural service provisions approaches  demands every time  an Agricultural Officer to visit a farmer for advises and more plant monitoring which is very difficult and expensive. A farmer has to travel to where agro shops are carrying a sample of  affected plants for descriptions. Not only that but also when harvested a most small scale producers have little access to buyers which forces them to sell their crops at low prices to middle men while middle men will sell the same product to consumers at high prices which makes farmers to continue to be poor while working very hard. Plant clinic will deliver high quality services where a farmer can just take a picture of the affected plant and upload it into the chamakids app, the app through deep learning techniques will analyse the picture and give results and advises to the farmer within few minute( 1-10 minutes time). Also through this app the buyers will be able to to order certain amounts needed and a farmer will haverst as per order placed for the particular time. Moreover time will be saved and costs reduced while helping the farmer to harvest more and loose less of the crops. 

The core technology is the use of Artificial Intelligence technology especially  Machine Learning and  deep learning and natural language processing to facilitate better agricultural service delivery.  Things like Who are the plant doctors and healthworkers and where do they work? Where are the health posts or clinics and plant hospitals? Where do you send a sample to be analysed? Who recommends what to buy from Agrochemical supply shops? Farmers can of course get independent advice on plant health problems but it is haphazard and irregular.  Millions of farmers fail to get advice when they need it. We think a new approach is needed  and therefore due to these challenges we came up with an idea of designing an Artificial Intelligence System which will help the following.

• Help farmers identify their soil types and the crop types which can grow better in that soil type.
• Know how to prepare to prepare the farm plots and crop spacing depending the crop type and the topography of the area.
• Get advises on how and where they can get better seeds close to their neighbourhood.
• Take pictures of their plants input them in the App where the app will send the data to the AI system processes them and get results in few minutes what plant diseases are there, what pesticides should be taken and how and when to spread the pesticides.
• Help farmers get better knowledge on how to practice organic farming
• Connect farmers with market of their products through an App.

There are many evidences where agricultural services have been offered by human personels, this solution is still under development and not published because we are still developing and training machines to work as humans. The use of Artificial Inteligence in servces provisions is now a widely spreading technologies an this is what motivated us to conceptualize and bring together many agricultural challenges facing small scale farmers and train computer to bring solutions. The technology has been tested in cassava plant diseases detecting several disease in Busia in Kenya with an app called Plant Village Nuru and can be accessed at google play.

Plant Clinic connected with chamakids  applications will offer better farming training and Agricultural as well as marketing  services designed to improve farmers’ agricultural knowledge, attitudes, and practices. We assume that if there is reliable rainfall, and a farmer adapt the farming instructions given , then we hope that the new practices will result into increased harvests for the farmers. A larger harvest should reduce hunger in the household and allow for investments in human capital, such as education, and physical capital, such as farm equipment. With more productive people and farms, farmers can increase their overall household income and achieve a higher standard of living. The impact is Improved knowledge, practices, attitudes, increased productivity and capital investments which all will be measured by multiplying the total number of farmers using the impact change for every farmer that is taking the previuos productivity experiences and amounts deducted from the productivity after using the Plant clinic applications. Our activities include training in agronomic practices and farm management, connect farmers with best markets of their crops, train farmers on investments skills apart from farming itself.

We are expecting to impact 100000  small scale farmers who are cultivating both horticultural crops and cerial crops in Morogoro region first then we will be scalling up into other regions in Tanzania then other countries in East Africa, African continent and the world at large.

In five years,we expect to complete the Machine learning training program  for atleast 20 most growing food crops in Africa to make sure that we reach more farmers depending on their plant categories, we will use drones to take high quality plant pictures, obtain plant diseaes data from Sokoine University of Agriculture, Ukirugulu Agricultural college, and other research institutions both from Tanzania and outside Tanzani to make sure that we will have enough data to be able to train the machines to the best acuracy. Because we will have also an Expert portal which will receive notifications when a farmer has received diagonosis of the plant challenges  they are facing, and because the chamakids app will function offline we expect more better services will be provided to many farmers despite of the network connectivity challenges.  We expect to save 100000 farmers in 2021/2022 but we expect to impact more than 2000000 farmers in Tanzania. We understand that if we will help more farmers to gain more and loose less, and also connect farmers with better markets of their products, then  we will eradicate hunger and poverty as well.

First we are lacking funds to purchase the required infrastructure as well as to collect the required training datasets to facilitate machine training.

Second We have a shortage technical staffs in areas of plant diseases, AI infrastructure installations and management, marketing Officer

Third The ability of farmers to use the technology.

We are involving different partiners including Non Governmental Organizations who have similar objectives of helping small scale farmers to improve their livelihood like World Vision Tanzania, The Aghakan Foundations, TAHA etc to help us collect enough data to train our machines. On the part of Technical stakeholders  we will employ three AI experienced staff to build capacity to our team members. Also through the involvement of different partiners an the government, as well as the use of media companies we are planning to raise more awareness on the importance and the efficiency of using the AI system in providing better Agricultural services.

Our team currently has 3 people who are working full time to develop the idea and  5 people are working as part time. We are also have small scale farmers from 8 villages who are cultivating horticultural crops of different professions , Dr Richard Madege from Sokoine University of Agriculture, Mr Charles Chunga the Managing Director, Mr Zakaria Mwamilawa IT, Mrs Mary Charles , Business Manager, MR Lucas Chunga, Accountan. These are working full time while others are working as part time. 

We are members of different professions who are committed in producing results, The team for two years we are just using self financing mechanism to build our solutions which now   we are about to produce the Plant Clinic solution. Dr Richard Madege has enough experience in Plants Agronomy and Agricultural practices, He is leading the data collection section which will be used in training our machines. Mr Zakaria and Ismail are working as IT professions who have 5 years experience in App development, Mr Charles Chunga works as a Team Leader but also he is working as a geographical Information System and Remote Sensing Expert who has 10 years in App and database deisgns, capacity building and project management. Mrs Mary Charles is working as a business manager who i s coordinating the marketing section and proposal developments part. Mr Lucas Chunga is leaing the financial department as an accountant with 5 years of experience in financial management.

Currently we have just partnered with village governments and small scale farmers associations to  teach us different challenges and the way they think they can have better services with different prices and so forth.

Plant Clinic has four distinct customers: farmers, Agro chemicals companies, , Non Governmental Organizations who are working to help small scale farmers like World Vision Tanzania, Tanzania Horticultural Association etc and Research Institutions. The need for better agricultural services is quit exciting because  agriculture is an industry which keeps growing as the population increases more food will be needed especially organically produced foods which will save human lives. Our retailing model is built on customers assurance, high standards for service delivery and safety, year-round availability, and, sometimes, lower prices. We are committed at helping people to achieve their planning goals while making our business grow, customers will charged depending on the service category and producers will be linked with buyers of their products at good prices which to ensure profit on what they produce.

We are facing  a great challenge of financial capacity there fore Solve will help us alot in getting funds to take our innovation to many people in the world and this will give us a chance to save more people who are in most cases come from low income families. Solve also will help us get some technical staffs in areas of Artificial Intelligence especially in areas of installation and how to managing the system sustainably. Moreover

We need funds to facilitate the stablization of our solution, because we will start with each particular plant, take high resolution images using drones, get different research data from different sources, having enough fund will help us get more data to train the machines to work as humans

We would like to partner with MIT because we hope they will have great contribution in installation and management of the Machine learning systems with the capacity which will serve the purposes we intended for. Also we will partner with the Ministry of Agriculture and Sokoine University of Agriculture especially Pest and Disease epartment, Plant Agronomy department , Soil science department and weather station section.

Many refugees camps in Kigoma region especially Kibondo, Nyarugusu and other camps they are involving in agricultural activities to get food for refugees, moreover many refugees in these camps are involving in small business activities within camping areas under supervisions. This solution will facilitate many refugees who are involving in farming activities to increase their productivity.

70% of food producer in Tanzania are women of which the majority are practicing shifting cultivation with less farming skills. Since the solution aimed at supporting small scale farmers to produce food sustainably by improving the Extension services and also provide more farming skills with support of some farming inputs, then many women will be the great beneficiaries of this solution.

Plant Clinic solution is designed to use Deep Learning and Machine learning concepts in analysing the data to make sure that most of the farming challenges can be solved using machine learning. Using their mobile phones and from their respective locations they can monitor their plants growth and reduce demages from insects. This will save the lives of many both producers and consumers.

Plant Clinic solution uses the Artificial Intelligence mechanism to provide plant monitoring and train farmers the best farming skills which will facilitate more farmers gain more than what they loose. As the world population keeps growing more food will be needed and if there is no proper mechanisms to increase productivity there will be shortage of food in many countries because more land is converted into settlements lands and other uses. This solution will facilitate farmers to use small pieces of lands and produce more food crops.