SiiAGRO

Agriculture is one of the main productive activities in Mexico, contributing $555,717 million pesos to the national economy. In Mexico the use of pesticides is 53,200 tons per year and represents 6.6% of production costs. There is failure by farmers to comply with recommendations of pesticide dosage, frequency and time of application; resulting in ecosystems pollution and inefficiencies in production. We will deploy the use of SiiAGRO by farmers’ associations in Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico. SiiAGRO is a platform of consultation, control and spatial-temporal monitoring of agroecosystems, from which we can design programs oriented to diminish the use of pesticides, establish monitoring objectives and metrics for the implementation of improved agricultural practices and pesticides management. Considering the importance of agriculture for communities and food security worldwide, the use of SiiAGRO by farmers on a global scale, will reduce pollution to ecosystems and benefit communities by making their production more efficient.

The problem we are solving is the over usage of pesticides in agricultural practices in Sinaloa and Nayarit, main agricultural states in Mexico. Over usage of pesticides pollutes watersheds, affects health of farmers and consumers, and increases production costs making agriculture production inefficient. Sinaloa has eight irrigation districts, covering 834,000 hectares, corn represents 64% of the area. Nayarit has one irrigation district which covers 51,329 hectares with the main produce is sorghum represents 27% of the area. This corridor has numerous coastal wetlands, some with the category of RAMSAR and AICA. The discharge from agriculture pollutes the wetlands affecting flora, fauna and other productive activities such as fisheries. Agriculture generates 176,000 and 95,000 jobs in Sinaloa and Nayarit, respectively. It is presumed that there are high, although not quantified, costs to the environment and public health. Global estimations indicate that 33% of soils with agricultural potential present moderate to high levels of degradation associated to erosion, salinization and chemical pollution. SiiAGRO will allow farmers and us to consult, follow-up, control and monitor agroecosystems, and design programs oriented to diminish the use of pesticides, establish monitoring objectives and metrics for the implementation of improved agricultural practices and pesticides management. 

SiiAGRO is a platform of consultation, follow-up, control and spatial-temporal monitoring of agroecosystems, from which we can design programs oriented to diminish the use of pesticides, establish monitoring objectives and metrics for the implementation of improved agricultural practices and pesticides management. The platform is designed to present several layers of information to consult or to conduct a spatial-temporal analysis of the agricultural practices. Its resolution is at a level of a field, with primary information inputs: use of pesticides, characteristics of the crop and its development, costs and performance of production; and secondary inputs of the environment: distribution of species, protected areas, and the public health environment (e.g. location of schools, distribution of vulnerable groups). The functionality of the platform is complemented with tertiary inputs, from data bases of toxicological characteristics and physicochemical properties of the pesticides. SiiAGRO will serve as a tool to identify technological packages with less environmental impact and evaluating risks for public health.  We will deploy the use of SiiAGRO by farmers’ associations in Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico. The deployment will allow us to define the best option to scale its usage based on the perceived barriers and benefits of producers to adopt the tool. 

Our target population are farmers’ associations of Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico. One of the problems at the moment is related to the lack of technical advice and training they receive from the public sector. Farmers use the pesticides recommended by commercial businesses, whose primary goal is to sell more. We are currently presenting SiiAGRO in watershed councils in Sinaloa and Nayarit, the farmers are part of the members of these councils. We will conduct in-depth interviews and focus groups to understand the perceived barriers and benefits from farmers of the adoption of SiiAGRO and identify how to simplify its usage and take it to scale. SiiAGRO will help farmers by providing them with recommendations of the pesticides they can use in their crop, to diminish pollution to the watersheds and improve efficiency by reducing production costs. 

Functioning ecosystems underpin all of human society. However, as production is seen through a silo lens, sometimes disconnected to the environment, soils have been degraded, watersheds are polluted and discharges of pesticides end up in priority wetlands. We have chosen the dimension of “provide scalable and verifiable monitoring data collection to track ecosystem conditions, such as biodiversity, carbon stocks or productivity” as SiiAGRO is a platform of consultation, follow-up, control and spatial-temporal monitoring of agroecosystems, to design programs oriented to diminish the use of pesticides, establish monitoring objectives and metrics for the implementation of improved agricultural practices and pesticides management. 

We are currently presenting SiiAGRO to farmers’ associations in watershed councils, in order to select a number of associations both in Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico to test the platform. 

SiiAGRO as it’s a platform where several layers of information are introduced related to the agroecosystem to design programs for the use, control and management of pesticides and improved agricultural practices. We will test the solution with farmers’ associations to identify the barriers and benefits perceived by them to adopt the tool, in order to take it to scale. Currently farmers only receive advice from technicians from product companies who sell pesticides and whose primary goal is to sell. SiiAGRO is a useful tool to present recommendations to the farmers on the best mixture of pesticides to use, which will minimize the impact to the ecosystems and make their production more efficient by reducing costs. Although we do not have the objective of selling the tool as a product, we believe that we can present it to the Ministry of Agriculture to promote its adoption at the national level. 

Currently we are presenting SiiAGRO to farmers' associations of two watershed councils in Sinaloa and Nayarit. We expect ten farmers’ associations to adopt the tool in one year, and scale its adoption to 50 farmers’ associations in five years. The number of farmers differs from one association to the other, related to the crop and production. We will target the producers of the main crops in both states (i.e. corn and sorghum).

We have not started using SiiAGRO with farmers’ associations, we are currently in the phase of presenting the tool to them in watershed council meetings, by the end of June, 2021 we expect to present it in two watershed councils of Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico. Some of the data to be collected before deploying the adoption of SiiAGRO by our target audience includes: number of farmers, crops, coverage, pesticides used, quantity of pesticides used and pests. 

Miguel Betancourt, CIAD

Gustavo Danemann, Executive Director of Pronatura Noroeste

Juan Carlos Leyva, Regional Coordinator in Sinaloa for Pronatura Noroeste

Mauricio Cortes, Regional Coordinator in Nayarit for Pronatura Noroeste

Natalie Rodriguez Dowdell, Shorebirds Conservation Program Coordinator and Project Lead for Pronatura Noroeste

Each member of the team has over 20 years of experience in the field of natural resources conservation, community development and applied research. We are skilled to reach diverse groups of stakeholders at the territorial level to generate consensus, develop projects and ensure that the research we undertake can be applied to solve problems and present viable solutions, which can later be replicated. 

CIAD and Pronatura Noroeste offer equal employment opportunities. We advance a respectful and caring community both within our organizations and with the communities that we work on. Although our target audience is not comprised of indigenous communities, it consists of a rural population of Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico, which on ocassions are vulnerable to the public policy implemented by the national government that affects their economy and their communities. 

Our main objectives of applying to Solve include: (1) becoming part of a network of organizations and members with which we can share SiiAGRO to identify partners for improvement of the tool; (2) defining the best option to promote the tool from a branding and marketing perspective, although our goal is not the sell the tool; and, (3) getting seed capital to conduct our workshops, develop programs for improved agricultural practices and implement the use of SiiAGRO by farmers' associations in Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico (10 in the first year and 50 in five years). One of the main barriers is the difficulty of farmers to use technology, the network of Solve could help use to simplify our tool for our target audience.

SiiAGRO is a product and we need to identify the best option of branding and marketing to get adoption of the tool by farmers’ associations in Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico, this will entail conducting market research and determining the best language to be used with a rural population. In addition, we seek advice from technology developers to develop a simplified version of the tool.

We want to partner with: (1) organizations in the field of technology development to develop a simplified version of SiiAGRO; (2) farmers’ associations in Sinaloa and Nayarit, Mexico to get them to use SiiAGRO and identify necessary improvements of the tool; and, (3) the Ministry of Agriculture at the national level to identify the viability of deploying the tool on a national scale.

Pronatura Noroeste, AC., is a Mexican conservation organization which has worked in Northwest Mexico for over 30 years to conserve the priority ecosystems in the region for the benefit of local communities. CIAD is a research institute based in Sonora, Mexico, that for 40 years has contributed to applied research of complex problems in the region and developing high quality professionals. The combined experience of both organizations and leadership in the region with diverse stakeholders including public and private organizations and communities, allow us to reach a large network of farmers' associations and present SiiAGRO in key forums. We will use the GSR Prize to scale the use of SiiAGRO in more communities of Northwest Mexico, develop a second module of SiiAGRO for fertilizers, in order to improve farmers' use of these agrochemicals based on soil analysis. In addition, we will launch a hackaton to turn SiiAGRO from its current format to an easy to use App, based on the perceived barriers and benefits of farmers to adopt the tool. We will also identify key forum at the international level to present SiiAGRO, to identify potential partners.