farmsupport.ng

Climate change has become real in sub-Saharan Africa. Rain patterns have completely changed hence, farmers who learnt agronomy practices from their parents (generational skill transfer) are now caught up by completely new and unpredictable patterns. Hence, planting and harvesting time is gradually changing. Farmsupport.ng was set up by the NGO Food Safety and Security Project (FSSP) to help small holder famers (SHFs) in Africa especially women adapt to climate change. The Elevate Prize funding and support will enable farmsupport.ng platform provide timely field data supported information to SHFs using digital innovations including local radio outreach, Short Message Service (SMS) in local and English languages and Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD). This information will influence SHFs choices and decisions as regards crop varieties, agronomic practices, market intelligence and general farm planning for climate adaptation. This will reduce cost of farming by SHFs with the use of SMS alerts (including voice SMS to reduce language barrier) on inputs prices, locations of nearest dealer; pests and disease warnings including bio-security measures. We want to install solar powered irrigation system in 5 farming communities of hit by unpredictable drought since 2018. Adapting SHFs to climate change using technology hence producing more food.

We are a network of seasoned professionals committed to improving the farming experience of the sub-Saharan African agricultural landscape by providing support to SHFs. 

Our vision is to improve food security by 40% in 10 million smallholder farmers’ homes by 2030 in Sub-saharan Africa. 

Our mission is to help sub-Saharan African farmers adapt to climate change whilst also mitigating against it. This will help ensure food security for families living in unreported poverty.

As a unit set to help SHFs adapt to climate change, It is headed by the Executive Director Projects in FSSP - but basically supervised by the NGO management and board.

Future goals 

• Specialized transport service for farmers and food dealers including farm gate to table direct
• Capacity Building for public and private sector extension officers
• Another key area for us is the finance, loan and insurance sectors which we will build from SHFs harvest and sales data base we will accumulate over 3 to 5 years and make informed predictions. These predictions will serve as collateral for SHFs and other layers in the industry to access tailored finance, loans and insurance services. This is big avenue for us to scale for sustainability

The specific problem is adverse effects of climate change on SHFs in sub-Saharan African and the consequences on food security at family level. In Nigeria floods and droughts occur now at an alarming rate and ferocity; also changes in disease patterns creating the need to provide early speedy warning alerts to farmers. The scale is huge as SHFs lost over 80% of rice yield in 2020 to drought or flooding  in Nigeria wiping out savings of poor farmers. Piggery SHFs in eastern Nigeria lost an average of 80 pigs to African Swine fever in 2019, SMS timely alert on biosecurity world have stopped the spread.

How it works

SMS, USSD and radio feeds will be used to timely deliver field generated and analyzed data to SHFs to make informed decisions. A data base of farmers contacts grouped along location and type (crop or animals) will be developed online and offline. The use of radio, SMS and USSD is very popular in Nigeria now as marketed by government agencies and mobile money service providers. Hence little barrier in product acceptance except people in remote areas hence radio service as revealed by SHFs feedback service.  

The use of radio, SMS and USSD is very popular in Nigeria even COVID 19 protocols are pushed to the populace through them now. Our service is disruptive as SHFs interviewed by our team said they will appreciate the service since it will reduce cost and time spent going or calling the officers at weather observatory stations since they can access the service with simple Nokia torch as its called here. The hypothesis is that timely and targeted delivery information through SMS, USSD and radio feeds will improve agronomic practices adaptability, choice of crops and access to market by SHFs. Using these digital platforms will help us generate huge data base to help government agencies or donor community plan intervention services based on verifiable data. Also the private sector can mine our data with SHFs permission to package finance, credit and insurance based of metrics analytics from our site. This data will revolutionize agribusiness development at the SHFs level transforming them into viable bankable business units fighting poverty at the grassroot. Big retail chains can rely on our data to buy directly or influence farmers to adopt mitigation practices or produce health foods with less contamination from farm to table. 

We are very effective now on twitter (@farmsupportN) where we are reaching farmers from many parts of Africa. The website www.farmsupport.ng is up but still undergoing modifications. We are working with weather observatory agencies to get data and relay to farmers by text. This service is yet to be digitalized automatically as soon as you register on our site. For farmers groups we are working with now we send bulk SMS to leaders who relate with other members to reduce cost. With funding we will reach individual farmers. We have secured agreements with accredited seeds and input suppliers to ensure higher yield in 2021, such as drought resistant cassava stem to be supplied this year. Seeds are key to SHFs empowerment in both drop and animal production. Digital certification of seed suppliers especially genome labelling will be done in future for traceability. The farmers are happy as most are relying on us now to plan cultural practices in these times of climate change. The service is cheap as they are only not charged for receiving but many are promising to support our mission in future. Our consultants and SHFs are excited about the success so far recorded hence very sustainable.