Agcess

Smallholder farmers are being left out of the wave of digital agriculture due to connectivity issues preventing the adoption of precision agriculture insights. Indeed, one in four farmers in America has no access to stable internet connection. By processing publicly available satellite imagery, we use SMS messaging and a lightweight web platform to communicate insights that are useful to farmers, including plant productivity, soil wetness, and average soil temperature. This information is then disseminated to users over text and on our web platform. Given the lightweight nature of the data we are communicating, it is now accessible to farmers in an unprecedented and novel way and helps to bridge the technological gap that impedes the optimization of agricultural practices for small farmers. At a global level, this intervention of providing agricultural insights to those without internet access via SMS messaging could increase profits by almost 60% for most farms.

Innovations in digital agriculture could help farmers meet the rising demand in global food production, expected to double by 2050. Yet, of the 273,000 farmers in the United States, about 240,000 of them are small farmers and almost 70,000 are without access to the internet. Indeed, one in four farmers in America has no access to stable internet connection. Without adequate connectivity and access, smallholder farmers are unable to utilize these precision agriculture technologies and fail to satisfy demand. Current players in precision agriculture use drones, commercial satellites, and UAVs, but these emerging technologies have high operating costs, and their data-intensive maps are not feasible in low bandwidth settings. Without access to valuable insights due to these financial and infrastructural constraints, farmers are unable to optimize their food production and climate-friendly practices moving forward. Thus the problems that preclude inclusion of farmers in the digital economy are two-fold: lack of connectivity and high operating costs. Agcess addresses both of these components but providing a lightweight, low-cost solution to expand digital inclusion to smallholder farmers.

There are two components to innovation: the advancement of technology and its utilization. After all, technology is only as useful as it is used. Developing technology that is not viable for a quarter to more than half of farmers means that advancements in agricultural innovation are on track to outpace their usage. Therefore, Agcess has specifically chosen to address the noticeable disparity in adoption of digital agriculture due to bandwidth and connectivity issues. We know that the agricultural insights we want to provide will increase farmers’ profits and food production, but they are currently procured and offered in a prohibitively costly way, not to mention they fail to take into account the poor internet access in most rural communities. Thus, our solution capitalizes on publicly available satellite imagery and provides a lightweight platform alternative to ensure that small farmers can access these insights even in resource-poor and low-bandwidth settings. Providing farmers with tools adjusted for the context of their environments is the most important step in enabling their inclusion in the digital economy. While further infrastructure and bandwidth will ultimately allow for their sustainable inclusion, Agcess will induct small farmers into digital agriculture and the economy today.

We have two main customer archetypes: the small farmer who does not have adequate internet access and the one who cannot afford precision agriculture in its current manifestation. In regard to the first archetype, of the 273,000 farmers in the United States, about 240,000 of them are small farmers and almost 70,000 are without access to the internet. These small farmers who are left behind because of their lack of connectivity are who we aim to engage and empower with the inclusivity that our SMS messaging of agricultural insights enables. 

For the second archetype, the current high costs of accessing precision agriculture insights precludes the majority of farmers — even those with bandwidth — from employing these precision agriculture technologies. According to Accenture, less than 20% of agricultural acreage is managed using the technology due to the high cost of gathering  precise field data. By incorporating publicly available data and partnerships predicated on the flourishing of small farms, Agcess endeavors to expand the utilization of these precision agriculture technologies.

The low costs and lightweight nature of Agcess’ SMS messaging and web platform make it more accessible, and thus more appealing, than existing options for all farmers, including those without connectivity and those that cannot afford the prohibitively expensive alternatives. We have confirmed this to be true among the customers we envision as our early adopters: small farmers in Upstate New York. There are 33,438 farms in New York State and 98% of them are family-owned. Our first product focuses on grain and oilseed agriculture, which employs nearly 15,500 people in the state. This is our target customer demographic for the launch of Agcess: small farmers, operating family-owned farms in New York that focus on grain and oilseed agriculture.

As the Challenge overview highlights, the ability to access and interact with the digital economy is an increasingly integral part to leading a productive and dignified life. This is especially true for small farmers who have been continuously left behind in technological innovation due to the poor bandwidth and connectivity in rural areas. Our solution aligns perfectly with the challenge and our selected dimension by arming smallholder farmers with the digital tools necessary to overcome the technological gap between corporate and local farms presently. Digital inclusion begins with access, and Agcess provides exactly that.

There are four major technical components: (1) the coding of the satellite imagery & the extraction of insights, (2) the usage of cloud services for hosting & SMS messaging, (3) the successful dissemination of the insights to farmers, and (4) the interface design. Our team has already accomplished the first by using mapping tools to isolate regions of interest and retrieving the valuable insights. We have also built out the SMS messaging infrastructure, but are working currently on Azure integration. Moving forward, our remaining technical challenges will be the execution and design of the lightweight web platform. Additionally, we have been interviewing local smallholder farmers, learning about the market and target customer demographic, and investigating the problems posed by a lack of connectivity to better understand how we can address this gap. To date, we have conducted 20 customer interviews with small farmers and experts in grain and apple farming.