SCPAI

Serve, Cameroon.

SCPAI

Short-Cycle Production with Agricultural Intelligence - SCPAI

Yaoundé

CMR

For-profit, including B-Corp or similar models

According to Mordor Intelligence, food production in Cameroon has a projected market of $14B+ by 2030 and an annual agricultural output of over 10 million metric tons. This might indicate a healthy agricultural economy for a country of 28 million people, but it is conventionally misleading. Over 18 million Cameroonians are subsistence (hand-to-mouth) farmers who have never been able to rise over the $2.5/day income they live on. Although agriculture is the main source of income for the average Cameroonian, it fails to create economic prosperity for the more than 73% of the population who directly depend on it. Subsistence agriculture is seasonal and small-scale, with farmers cultivating multiple products simultaneously in the same growing season. Due to the unpredictability of the agricultural system, crop failure, poor production, mismanagement of limited resources, and overapplication of chemical fertilizers are very common. Crop producers lack the skill and access to utilize available agricultural, context-specific information (such as what and where to produce), and no technology exists to help them make progress. The result is that they cannot produce enough for economic sustenance.

SCPAI represents a systemic transformation from subsistence to commercial agriculture, focusing on short-term, high-yield crops that mature in three to four months through precise, instruction-based, continuous production and nonseasonal processes. Farmers receive training to adhere to these instructions, ensuring that their farms remain productive, sustainable, resilient, and stable. The instructions, delivered as checklists to farmers’ devices, result from complex computations that reflect crop physiology, phenology, dynamics, and production potential based on specific agroecosystems, including weather, pests, diseases, microclimate, tree canopy, soil water content, and photothermal conditions. SCPAI simulates the entire process to determine the optimal conditions for production. It then sends step-by-step instructions to the farmer to achieve the desired market yield for their products. This may sound like an overly high-tech solution for individuals unfamiliar with computers, but it functions much like a car; the farmer does not need to understand how it operates. Working with a time-step that aligns with crop growth and development, SCPAI provides instructions such as, ‘use 100L of water for irrigation at 12:00pm on Friday, April 3rd. '

SCPAI is designed for Cameroonian farmers who have historically relied on subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods. It aims to provide them with information on how to achieve commercial yields without the stress of limiting factors beyond their control. As subsistence farmers, they struggle to access financial and other resources to scale up production because financial institutions view their work as unprofitable, unpredictable, and unappealing. However, with SCPAI, we can transform farmers’ limited resources into high-yield, energy-efficient processes that sustain high productivity and low costs over time. Unlike in the West, where access to agronomic research and technologies like DSSAT and GECROS is widespread, such technologies are absent in Cameroon. There is only one faculty of agricultural sciences in the entire country, and its curriculum is severely lacking. By using SCPAI, farmers will be able to secure financial (and other) resources for scaling production by demonstrating a track record of superior performance to financial institutions. This is achievable because they can follow proven, precise instructions that consistently lead to excellent agricultural outcomes. The result for Cameroonian farmers is that they will finally be able to create economic prosperity for themselves by doing what they know best.