Empowering rural growers with knowledge

Our aim is to help African’s County authorities and agri-business in meeting the ever-increasing demand for food, by delivering timely pertinent and individualized agronomic-related insights to smallholders. To do so, an agro-meteorological process-based model, crop type, cultivation practices and satellite-based land parcel database are used to calculate daily crop needs (water, fertilizers) and predict yields. We will impact the lives of millions of farmers who will receive text/audio information in local languages via both smart and low-end phones.

Our solution will result in positive outcomes at different levels of the value chain:

• Enhance Governments and agri-business’ knowledge of the quantity of fertilizers to be procured at county level.
• Improve the attribution of fertilizers according to real farmers’ needs at market-place level.
• Support Smallholder farmers to sustainable use of fertilizer: the right amount at the right place at the right time.

While the world population is growing and food consumption is consequently increasing, hunger will become a key issue in the next decades. The geographical area which will be mainly concerned by this topic is Africa, where farmers are facing severe challenges with regards to poverty, climate change, competitiveness and profitability, as well as demands to increase production with less environmental footprints.

Despite tremendous efforts to foster agricultural production and increase rural income, governments and agri-business face numerous obstacles when subsidizing seeds and fertilizers to smallholder farmers which can be summarized as follows:

• Farmers' lack of skills in sustainable farming to use procured fertilizers efficiently.
• Governments and agri-business' lack of knowledge on precise quantity of fertilizers to be procured.

The use of quality fertilizers guided by an agro-meteorological process-based crop model integrated into a decision support tool open up sustainability and yield increase opportunities thanks to agronomic-related recommendations generate by crop models integrated within the digital tool. 

To help authorities to address the Fertilizer Subsidy issues from value-chain down to farmers, we have developed a cloud-based and mobile-enabled platform to enhance extension services in the value-chain referring to the attribution of subsidized fertilizers, for the benefit of authorities, agri-business and farmers. 

Our solution is a smart combination of satellite imagery to detect cultivated areas, field boundaries, crop, field location and seeding date to fuel a crop model integrated into an interactive cloud-based and mobile-enabled Platform, called FieldSim. which then:

1. monitors crops growth by calculating daily stress (water, nitrogen, etc.),
2. generates in-season map, Country level agricultural statistics: 
   1. quantity of fertilizers to be procured at county and market-place level according to real farmers’ needs.
   2. acreage, yield forecast and production estimates,

1. produces and disseminates farm evidence for fertilizers needs to smallholder farmers,
2. delivers sustainable cultural practice advices down to farmers.

FieldSim results in the following benefits for all stakeholder of the agricultural value chain:

• Robust communication (text/audio) and knowledge share interface with farmers for government authorities and agri-business
• Allow more smallholder farmers to work more efficiently and competitively, and always in line with environmental and social sustainability
  • Increase yield and rural income
  • Sustainable use of fertilizers
  • Sustainable use of water

• Evidence-based information that build trust and eases access to credits and agricultural insurance services for farmers
• Transparency, accountability and anticipation

We target: 

• Service seekers: Farmers, Agri-Business, funding and insurance organizations:
• Service enablers (government, authorities, NGO, etc.) that want to reduce hunger, poverty and under-nutrition, by increasing small land holders yields, thanks to personalized agricultural extension services and text/audio information intelligence delivered to smallholders and farmers who otherwise could not have access to

• Agri-business that depend on small land holders’ production for their supplies, by providing them production information (yield forecast and production estimates) and loyalty services to secure their supplies sources, guarantee a qualitative and constant production, improve transparency and anticipation.
• Funding organizations that want to promote agricultural finance in Africa, by providing them information for assessing impacts and accountability of agriculture insurance linked to loans based on various relevant KIPs and indicators.

Service providers: (agronomists, extension officers, markets trackers, etc.), who are frustrated by unpredictable, inconsistent and low agricultural production levels and volatile income, by delivering weather forecasts, timely pertinent and actionable individualized advice (e.g. the best suited sowing or harvest date, how to plant crops, how to use fertilizers) to increase their yields/revenue, improve their life conditions and ease the access to credits/insurance services.

Our solution has been designed to meet the needs of smallholder farmers in Africa in order to help them to produce better in terms of quantity and quality.  The integration of satellite imagery and crop models within the proposed Platform is derived from the fact that challenges of Africa's agriculture are highly diverse and complex. Smallholders often own only very small plots distributed over large areas. Satellite imagery will make it easier to locate them and to derive weather data and other useful crop information. The models will allow for proactive and intelligent crop monitoring and for estimating fertilizer needs.

The innovative nature our solution lies in

• The combination of digital and spatial technologies with dynamic crop models adapted to the local context to operate in both small rural fields and industrial farms.
• The modus operandi, where the farmer and his technician work together, using our Platform that acts as a GPS:

• The farmer has some regular interactions with the Platform (simple sms), registering all actions he performs.
• The Platform analyses the information, combines them with data from field in order to provide stress indicators (water, nitrogen…) and to propose several appropriate actions that can be applied. This enables the farm technician to provide accurate assistance to the farmer who then makes his own decisions.
• The technician can also propose several solutions depending on what has been done till now. 
  • Proposing the best options to the farmer according to the current status and to what has been done up to now
  • Helping the farm technician to give the best advice

This approach gives an added value to the technician whose role is not only to control the compliance of farmer’s actions anymore, but also acts in a proactive way by giving explanations and precise recommendations all along the cultural cycle.

This is where the main innovation of Platform is: having an active collaboration supported by an efficient tool resulting in a dynamic and shared expertise.  We change the paradigm by: 

Proposing the best options to the farmer according to the current status and to what has been done till now

Our solutions derive from our combination of technological expertise and sector experience:

• Mobile (smart and low-end): We utilise the various features of a mobile phone, including cross-platform applications accessible in both smart and low-end phones, to provide multi-modal (3D, graphic, charts, voice, text, etc.) and cross-channels (gsm, Internet, etc.) services and expertise with mobile and web access to reach Africas' smallholder farmers of today and tomorrow. The mobile-based agricultural Decision Support System (DSS) and information service is a giant leap of e-Tumba towards becoming an epitome of complete DSS and information system. This new venture, which offers a plethora of high added value services, could very well be positioned as a right tool for information dissemination (even in isolated and marginal locations with low levels of technology or narrow internet bandwidth) that leverages on the modern technology.
• Crop growth simulation models and AI algorithms: to simulate crops growth and to generate recommendations and farm evidence for fertilizer needs. Simulation results and recommendations are used by farm advisers on mobile devices to help farmers to make better decisions about suitable crop and appropriate options for reducing climate risks, improving crop productivity and products quality. They are also used to set optimum dates for farm operations at different locations and at different time windows.
• Spatial technologies:   Satellite imagery to detect cultivated areas, field boundaries and monitor crops. They also used to extract climate data needed by crops models.

Evidence that our technology works includes:

• Pilots in Senegal in 2018 and Ivory Coast in 2019.
• Crop models we have integrated within the Platform has been successfully proven in the last 6 years over 1,5 acres of maize in the USA by our long-term partner, the company ITK.

A commercial deployment has been done in 2019 in the Republic Democratic of Congo on 180 smallholder families and 5 extension officers.

In February 2020, we signed a five-year (renewable) MoU with a local agribusiness company for a revenue of $1.4 million (over the five years) to deploy our solution on its farm to help it supply more than 6,600 tons of corn grits per year to a local brewery, a subsidiary of the Castel group.

Furthermore, in addition to this, part of our solution will be used in a collaborative effort in Kenya in 2020 involving 2,000 small-scale maize farmers in Vihiga State with the collaboration of our long-term partner, ITK. Another deployment is planned in Mali with the French telecom operator Orange, as soon as possible the global post-coronavirus health situation permits.

The aims of this proposal to MIT Solve is to further enhance the existing Platform to incorporate satellite imagery classification analysis algorithms, using the observed and collected field data to extend existing features to improve  the attribution of fertilizers to smallholder farmers, to enhance farmers' knowledge database and enhance knowledge on farmers’ credit profiles.

Our goal is to promote the adoption of sustainable agriculture by smallholder farmers who generally are not trained, aware of or have few knowledges about sustainable agronomic practices. To do this, it is important to put the right tool in the hands of agri-business and Authorities, which respectively depend on smallholder farmers’ production for the supplies and the reduction of hunger and poverty in rural areas.

Usually, authorities and agri-business work with smallholder farmers in a contract farming approach, where they agree in advance on the terms and conditions for the production and marketing of farm products. These conditions specify the price to be paid to the farmer, the quantity and quality of the product demanded by the market, and the date for delivery. The agreement may also include information on how the production will be carried out or if any inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and technical advice will be provided by the buyer.

The heart our Theory of change lies behind our concept of "Connected rural for more", that revolves around our “Platform FieldSim” which is its operational frame. FieldSim engages all the stakeholders along and outside the value chain of the commodity or system of production to co-construct agronomic expertise and knowledge, prioritize farmers' needs and jointly develop solutions. Here, value chain stakeholders are the domain of change, while the central portion of the pathway of change is smallholder farmers' skills and expertise gained from being rightly advised across seasons, leading to individual, collective and systemic impacts in short, middle and long term.

• In the short term, we target farmer level individual impacts through improved yields and the resulting increase in income, thanks to advice to farmers on fertilizers input at field level.
• In the middle term, we target collective impacts at organization or regional level through in-season improvement of yields quality, thanks to the generalisation of timely and accurate insights over the whole organization.
• In long term, we target systemic impacts at national and regional level, thanks to services for aggregation of large data: map and agricultural statistics (acreage, fertilizers, yield forecast, etc.).

The solution currently serves 1 845 people: 1 810 smallholder farmers and 35 extension officers in 3 countries:

• Senegal: 100 smallholder farmers and 5 extension officers
• Ivoiry Coast:
• Republic Democratic of Congo (RDC) on 90 smallholder families and 4 extension officers.

• 20 smallholder farmers of 4 rice cooperatives and 1 extension officers
• 1 600 cacao farmers of 3 cooperatives and 25 extension officers

In one year, we will serve: 200 000 smallholder farmers:

• East Africa: 120 000 smallholder farmers and 600 extension officers
• West Africa:   80 000 smallholder farmers and 400 extensions officers
• East Africa: 600 000 smallholder farmers and 3 000 extension officers
• West Africa:   400 000 smallholder farmers and 2 000 extensions officers

In one year, we will serve:

Our goal within the next year are to:

• Address 10 000 maize smallholder farmers in Kenyan, RDC and Mali.
• Enhance the existing Platform to incorporate satellite imagery classification analysis algorithms, using the observed and collected field data to extend existing features to improve  the attribution of fertilizers to smallholder farmers, to enhance farmers' knowledge database and enhance knowledge on farmers’ credit profiles.

In 5 five years, we ambition to:

• Serve 1 million East and West African maize farmers who are now aware of or have some knowledge about new technologies (improved inputs, mobile, etc.), thanks to awareness-raising efforts made by many International Development Aid Organizations.
• Develop local representations and partnerships with local Scientific and Agri-Industrial Research to improve knowledge on farming practices adapted to the local reality and promote the use of digital based extension services
• Train more than 5 000 educated Youngs with the intend to create a network of   extension officers certified in digital and sustainable agriculture.

Our end ambition is to become the African AgriTech intelligence leader able to address the whole agronomic-related extension programmes value-chain down to farmers, including fertilizer subsidy and distribution programmes.

Current existing barriers for us to accomplish our goals are of different natures:

Operational barriers:

The implementation of our solution requires the collection of initial field data (location, farmers' data, crops, etc.).

In-season, it is also important for the technicians to go on site to collect field data, that illiterate farmers cannot

provide by any digital mean. However, African smallholder farmers are generally isolated and scattered over vast territories. Consequently, the collection of in-situ data is tedious, because of the poor road infrastructures and of the distance between farmers, when they are not in the same production area.

Technical barriers:

There are two main points to consider:

• The quality of the images with regard to cloud cover. Many African territories  are often subject to clouds, which can make the data unusable
• The images processing time. Our observations show long processing times (1 to 3 days for 3 km2 area, 91 plots) when using Sen2Agri process on a server with capacities: 8 Go, 8 cores. The computation time issue is inherent to the learning algorithms in general.

Social and economic barriers:

• Social barriers refer to the illiteracy of the majority of smallholder farmers. This may hinder the mass adoption and dissemination of the solution.
• Economic barriers are related to the costs of technologies used: satellite images, agronomic models and the information disseminating over mobile networks.

Operational barriers:

To overcome operational barriers, we plan to have a permanent presence on site and to collaborate with local partners, having mobility means to ease on-site visits.  In addition, we intend to train lead farmers in using the tool to have a local support to illiterated farmers in order to limit onsite visits of technicians.

Technical barriers:

 To solve the cloud cover issue, we plan to integrate different satellite images providers to guarantee the acquisition of images at different shooting windows to increase the probability of obtaining images taken at low cloud cover days or time frames.

• Regarding the images processing time, we are exploring the possibility of using the calculation services provided by Data Information Access Service (DIAS) providers, which have greater processing capacity, instead of doing it on our own infrastructure which is limited in power.
• Regarding the illiteracy of smallholder farmers, the platform has been designed to deliver text/audio information intelligence in local languages.
• To overcome economic barriers, our strategy is to have a competitive pricing policy to make the service accessible to all in order to multiply the number of producers served and thus reduce costs.

 Social and economic barriers:Regarding the illiteracy of smallholder farmers, the platform has been designed to deliver text/audio information intelligence in local languages.

• To overcome economic barriers, our strategy is to have a competitive pricing policy to make the service accessible to all in order to multiply the number of producers served and thus reduce costs.

Not applicable in our case as we did not select "Other"

e-Tumba has a 4 staffs team operating in France and in the USA providing technical support to his partners located in 4 developing countries (Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mali and Democratic Republic of Congo).

Our mission is to provide agronomic to support smallholder farmers, countries authorities and Agri-enterprises in establishing a stronger trading agreement, through skills development, collective bargaining and access to agronomic-related and market information, to agricultural insurance and to credit services.

We can therefore rely upon a deep knowledge of Agri-enterprises which are our direct business partners.

By providing services for the entire value chain, we are uniquely positioned to successfully achieve our mission.

e-Tumba was co-founded in November 2015 by Dieu-Donné OKALAS OSSAMI, Ph.D, who leads the company till now, and Pierre Alain ALRAN, who leads the Platform developments since.

Dieu-Donné OKALAS OSSAMI worked on the project with Eric JALLAS, Ph.D, President and founder of ITK from 2010 to 2015, when the consequences of climate change effects, began to be drastically felt by smallholder farmers in Africa with few support measures. Since 2015, e-Tumba is supported by a team of agronomic modelling experts, product design and research from the company ITK and two French agronomic research laboratories CIRAD and IRD.

We have developed since our creation a strong partner network consisting of public agronomic research laboratories (Cirad, IRD),  governmental business support funders (BPIFrance, Oséo/Créalia) and corporate partners (Orange Group, ITK, Mbeko-Shamba, Geocoton, etc.) and Non-Profit Organization (AnzAfrika).    

We work with:

• CIRAD and IRD, which are public agricultural research laboratories. They provide us with agronomic expertise so that we can make better use of research results.
• BPIFrance and Oséo/Créalia, which are public funding organizations. In 2017 we received a loan of 65,000 euros from Oséo/Créalia to finance a pilot project in Senegal.
• Orange for access to mobile phone services in countries where Orange operates.
• ITK, which is a long-standing partner with whom we are working in particular on the integration of agronomic models
• Mbeko-Shamba is an agro-industrial company based in Congo with whom we signed an MoU for a project to produce maize to be used to extract grits for a local brewery.
• Anzafrika, an American NGO for the monitoring and evaluation of social sustainability indicators in the project with Mbeko-Shamba in Congo to monitor the manner farmers really use the solution and resulting benefits.

100% of our revenues stem from business communities and corporate partners having an agreement with smallholder farmers for production and marketing of farm products, with the underlying principle that there are mutual benefits for poor farmers and the business community.

Together with partners, we always work on the creation of a business model that best match financial capabilities of their sector. We usually charge royalties per hectare on yearly basis. They depend on the number of hectares to be connected.

We are also involved in international collaborative projects related to rural development in Southern countries with major actors in the agricultural sector. These projects are financed by international grants or public funds with the idea of facilitating market access for the countries involved.

If our solution is selected as a Solver, we will invest the amount of the prize to improve the solution. We will invest in technology development, hiring one full stack developer  (back-and frontend) with mobile development capabilities and an agronomist to start R&D activities towards modelling carbon cycle in order to get some indicator on impacts of farming activities on carbon footprint. We will also invest in the sales and dissemination our solution for the Eastern Africa and allocate part of the funds towards increasing the hiring of internship students to continuously maintain the collaboration with IT and agronomic universities.

The students in internship will ensure our training program for field actors to use the solution, but also to ensure the formalization of user feedback for their implementation. This will increase pilots projects success and learner motivation.

We currently seek:

• UI and UX expertise to improve not only our Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs), but also the user experience our tools which must be very simple and easy to use, as we address a very uneducated audience;
• Marketing and media exposure to increase our visibility and notoriety to international Development Aid Organizations, agricultural insurance and credit service providers, as well as, agribusiness companies and their contracted smallholder farmers Organizations.
• An advisory board that includes experts in business and technology experience and Connections to investors and other financial partners to support our fundraising strategy.

As a technologically innovative and social-enabled startup we seek to partner with established companies, foundations and development aid organizations helping or investing in companies as ours, that reimagine solutions to some of today’s most significant challenges: Environment, Sustainable agriculture, Information dissemination in rural, Youth and Women education, rural development, etc.. in order to have a greater sense of ethic and stability as we grow. These organizations are: 

• Morgridge Foundation, 
• General Motors, 
• UN Women, 
• Atlassian Foundation, 
• Vodafone, 
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

All thsee organizations share common values among them:

the will of amplifying the impact of change-makers by funding and creating meaningful connections that foster innovation.

We would therefore like to partner with them on financing and networking questions, in order to introduce ourselves to certain international business partners.

In the southern provinces formerly known as "Katanga", where our Platform is deployed,  the needs in maize  sum up to 700,000 tons per year, while the local production barely amounts to 120,000 tons. The provinces have to resort to importing food from neighboring countries, which represents a huge burden on the region's economy.  Most importantly,  80% of the production is made by women. The biggest challenge they face is the lack of daily agronomic monitoring and guidance.  There is only a limited amount of agriculture experts in the region and without assistance, the farmers’ average output is at best one ton per hectare. 
With the right sustainable approach and support, they can easily produce up to 6 tons per hectare year.  Artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and big data analytics underpinned by mobile connectivity can even do more. They bring significant potential for capturing carbon, optimizing inputs usage, and reducing soil erosion. Thus, African women can not only provide the solution to the local food gap/insecurity but also become the primary protectors of their environment. 
To meet the demands of women in Katanga requires more granular data for both, input and output.  Also the communication channels need to be taylored. Many women farmers are illiterate. For them the advice must be translated into local languages they speak and transmitted to their phones as a voice message. Those who can read and write will receive the notifications through sms. This enables women to build skills, empower themselves and promote gender equality.

Some decades ago, The Green Revolution produced massive increases in crop yields throughout Asia and Latin America, but even today, many smallholders –farmers who produce crops on small plots (less than 1 hectare)  – struggle to afford and utilize the mechanized equipment and agricultural chemicals that came with that revolution.

When it comes to Africa, there is still great potential for productivity increases in agriculture. For example, in Kenya alone, the number of small-holder farmers is estimated between 5 million and 9 million people according to some estimates.

In order to see how artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data could help those farmers, we have developed our Platform, FieldSim, to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to crunch farming data and then send insights out to farmers’ cell phones. Below are main areas where the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)  in our solution is benefit for smallholder farmers:

Crop Monitoring:

Based on data from diverse sources: soil conditions, weather forecast, type of crop, infestation in a certain area, our Platform which is Artificial Intelligence based solution,  makes advice to smallholder farmers and farmers on the best action to take next. The advice is further personalized based on the farmer’s requirements, local context, and data about farming situations in the past. External factors like marketplace trends, prices or consumer needs are also factored into enable smallholder farmers and their farm advisors take a well-informed decision.

 Health monitoring of crops

Remote sensing techniques along with hyper spectral imaging and 3D laser scanning are essential to build crop metrics across thousands of hectares, even they are distributed over large territories. It has the potential to bring in a revolutionary change in terms of how plots are monitored by smallholder farmers and their farm advisors both from time and effort perspective. Here, IA is also be used to monitor and learn permanently on crops growth stages along their entire lifecycle including the detection and evaluation of the risks of anomalies/diseases and report generation.

The aim of Future Planet is to help organizations in  addressing the world’s biggest challenges (Climate Change, Education, Sustainable Growth & Security), by connecting them with  the world’s largest investors. 

Our roots lie in this direction, as our main mission is to address immediate farming challenges facing growers in order to help them in increasing their productivity and to allow them to work more efficiently and competitively always in line with environmental and social sustainability. 

Our solution come from research laboratories with the vision to make new digital and agronomic innovations in the hand of rural people who otherwise could not have access to.

It's for reason that we believe that the Future Planet support could help in increasing our partnerships with Universities and scientific research laboratories to facilitate the transfer of knowledge and the valorization of research results and so, to advance the state of the art.