The changes witnessed in agriculture have accelerated directly in tandem with knowledge expansion and adoption of new technologies. Several technological tools are driving the fourth industrial revolution, and the transformation of societal lifestyle patterns promises to hasten the growth of the agricultural sector to meet increasing food demands more cost-effectively and efficiently.
Worldwide, farmers are embracing and adopting new inventions and farming techniques to go beyond food security and make farming profitable. For instance, South East Asia as a subcontinent accommodates a large proportion of the Earth's population and has reasonable food security, despite depending mainly on subsistence farming. With the use of the right strategy, therefore, and other innovative technologies, sub-Saharan Africa can attain the same position.
Digital space opens several opportunities for farmers to access information on seeds, fertiliser varieties, product demand, and competitive prices with a click of a button, unlike previously when it took a longer for new knowledge and technology to disseminate. Today economic development takes a much shorter time, and a country can leapfrog from the bottom to the top of the pyramid. For example, with a mobile phone, a pineapple farmer in a rural village can market their produce, provide pictures, weight, and courier delivery period, and receive payments through Mpesa! In the media space, where the content creators are taking centre stage, the farmers will soon also be moving from the periphery to centre stage in the pricing and distribution of their produce.
The current Agricultural Sector Transformation and Growth Strategy is a step in the right direction because it promises to unlock the agribusiness sector's potential as a catalyst for food security and socioeconomic transformation. Its implementation, therefore, is hinged at the county level to ensure result-oriented undertakings that guarantee social, economic, and environmental sustainability. The strategy’s four main pillars include; innovation of on-farm production and input markets from subsistence to profitable agriculture for local and export markets; value-addition in the value chain from primary manufacture towards processing and retail; on-farm occupation into more productive agricultural jobs; and synchronising demand with distribution to reduce wastage.
Since the strategy encourages the adoption of new technology, farmer's cooperatives would play a key role by enabling farmers to pool resources together and adopt a recurrent user technology. These, for instance, would make it cost-effective to adopt technology such as soil and water sensors. Sensors would help farmers detect nitrogen and moisture levels and then assist them in determining when to add fertiliser or when the crops need water, especially for farmers using irrigation. Such technology would then increase crop yield and output per acre.
The other technology that farmers could team up to adopt includes weather-tracking technologies that contribute to more cost-effective, resourceful and ecologically profitable farming. The advantage behind the cooperative pooling resources in adopting technology is that they access training and skills development from the suppliers at cost-effective rates that increase the purchasing and bargaining power.
Karen Kandie
