How Cropin empowered Africa’s policymakers with regional agri-intelligence

Team Cropin
April 3, 2024
3 min read

Building on the insights from our previous blog on the growing importance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in agriculture, let’s delve deeper into Cropin’s expertise in offering agri-intelligence at a regional level.

Cropin, a global leader in agri-intelligence, is dedicated to assisting stakeholders across the agricultural value chain in navigating complex challenges and building a more sustainable future. This blog focuses on Cropin’s expertise in delivering agri-intelligence at a regional level. It specifically highlights a groundbreaking project empowering policymakers in Africa and showcases the transformative potential of our solutions.

Unveiling hidden patterns: AI for informed decisions

Policymakers in Sub-Saharan regions like Kenya and Nigeria are grappling with pressing challenges. Kenya faces a gap in maize production, which is projected to increase from 2.686 million tonnes in 2025 to 5.055 million tonnes by 2050. Similarly, Nigeria will likely become the world’s leading rice importer, with projected imports reaching 2.1 million tonnes by 2024. To address these food security challenges, empower smallholder farmers in these regions, and mitigate climate change’s impact, Cropin initiated a groundbreaking pilot project for its partner.

Unlocking insights with granular precision

Cropin’s mission was to utilize AI and remote sensing data to uncover acreage trends and yield estimates across these diverse agro-ecological zones. Cropin AI Labs addressed this by fine-tuning AI algorithms to meticulously assess land at a granular 5×5 km grid level. To overcome the hurdle of ground-truthing data, Cropin leveraged its unique spectral library – a treasure trove of crop signatures – for accurate crop identification.

Data-driven decisions for a more resilient future

The analysis revealed a concerning 17% decline in production across both countries between the base year (2018) and 2023. However, the power of the grid-view approach went beyond mere numbers. It helped identify the root causes of this decline: extreme drought, farmer migration to new lands, and rising temperatures. This granular data empowers policymakers with actionable intelligence.

Cropin’s “systemic efficiency” ensures the swift processing of massive datasets by deploying batch services, enabling cost-effective analysis for any new crop, season, or geography, even in remote regions. This translates into concrete benefits for policymakers, development agencies, and governments. They can leverage this data for holistic policy formulation, strategic budgeting, resource allocation, and forging effective partnerships. Businesses, too, benefit from this foresight, enabling the identification of new regions for sourcing and expansion, proactive risk mitigation, and strategic decision-making.

Seeing the unseen: how Cropin’s intelligence unlocks regional agricultural trends

Leveraging technology’s power, Cropin enables stakeholders to “see what the naked eye cannot, when it is at regional or planet scale,” translating into a range of capabilities:

Identifying agricultural land: Accurately picking out areas suitable for cultivation.

Pinpointing affected regions: Identifying areas most vulnerable to climate change and resource scarcity.

Devising collaborative synergy: Enabling a unified approach among stakeholders to address challenges.

Closing the knowledge gap: Providing crucial data to bridge the gap between theoretical solutions and practical implementation.

Risk mitigation: Empowering proactive approaches like irrigation planning to minimize losses and ensure food security.

Transforming reactive responses: Shifting from crisis management to preventative measures.

Conclusion

Cropin’s project in Africa demonstrates the transformative power of AI in regional agri-intelligence. By leveraging cutting-edge technology, Cropin empowers policymakers with the foresight to tackle complex challenges and build a more resilient agricultural future for Africa. This data-driven approach unveils hidden patterns and identifies root causes for proactive decision-making across the agricultural landscape. As climate change and other challenges evolve, Cropin’s field-tested agri-intelligence models emerge as a critical tool for building more secure and sustainable food systems.

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