NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 16 (Safaricom Newsroom)- Protecting crops from pests often means the difference between a good harvest and a poor one, or no harvest at all.
One of the easiest ways to protect the crops is to spray them with chemicals that kill the pests or make the pests so uncomfortable that they leave the area.
Spraying is also often an expensive and tedious process. Expensive because of the cost of the chemicals and the labour – you need someone who can carry a knapsack sprayer on their back and walk for long distances and hours. Tedious because of all the measuring one has to do and the protective equipment to be worn.
Even with this, there is the risk that some of the crops in the same farm could be sprayed with too little pesticide to be effective or so much that it causes harm to the crop and the environment.
As a farmer, Benjamin Ikombo has been living this experience from the time he used to help out on his parents’ farm to now, as he tends to his two-acre farm, where he grows oranges, onions and mangoes.
A fortnight ago, Benjamin and his neighbours gathered to watch and learn the use of drones in spraying the mango trees on his farm. A one-of-a-kind experience that will help farmers like Benjamin access farming mechanisation technologies that would otherwise be out of reach to them.
The event had been organized by DigiFarm, who have partnered with Astral Aerial, a tech start-up, to provide the drone technology for spraying crops.
Omondi Kasidhi, the Director of Digifarm, says the partnership leverages innovative technology to support rural Kenyan farms to become more efficient and cost-effective.
“The drones help with the spraying, mapping of the fields, they can do scouting and very soon some of them can even do something like planting as well. So we think it’s an important part of our offering that can do what they were doing before but just quicker, faster, and better,” says Omondi.
The technology, Benjamin believes, could transform his fortunes and those of other farmers like him. Watch the video of the drones spraying on his farm below.
“The drones help with the spraying, mapping of the fields, they can do scouting and very soon some of them can even do something like planting as well. So we think it’s an important part of our offering that can do what they were doing before but just quicker, faster, and better,” says Omondi.
The technology, Benjamin believes, could transform his fortunes and those of other farmers like him.
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