2017 ICT4D Conference

We believe that artificial intelligence and learning machines can boost human capacities to a new level, supporting people to take smarter decisions and save resources. Agriculture has been a neglected area for this new technology, despite 15-30% of the global yield being lost every year to plant diseases and pests. We think that there is much space for innovation here!

The classification of plant damages is crucial in order to apply effective treatment and prevention measures and to avoid food loss, waste of inputs and economic losses that ultimately even threaten food and nutrition security especially in rural livelihoods. In addition, the inadequate application of high doses of chemical treatments destroys natural resources and harms the health of both producers and consumers. Still, detection of plant diseases is expert knowledge in many areas of the world, where extension is scarce and knowledge is hardly accessible for most of the smallholder farmers, especially women. Despite the governmental endeavours of support, farmers do not have sufficient access to public-sector advisory services tailored to their particular needs. Instead of the necessary quick diagnosis and treatment option advice, smallholder farmers often find – nothing.

ICT solutions can bridge this gap using cutting edge technologies like image recognition and artificial intelligence to assist farmers worldwide in taking informed decisions on their disease management, almost in real time. Big data - translated in accessible formats like e.g. smartphone applications - has the capacity to radically change the way agricultural information is spread and agricultural practices are applied. Millions of people can be supplied with real time, valuable information on occurrence, spread and remedies for plant diseases and pests threatening their harvests. Apart from saving money wasted on ineffective treatments, we can save billions of tons of chemicals starting to use smart technologies in order to take intelligent decisions on our most precious resource: nature.