Are smart farms the future of agriculture

[Music]

rewind a few years

and never in a million years would you

have found me

showing up to an event in a city at a

bar

or a restaurant with a whole bunch of

people i had never met in my life

and honestly even if i did

i don’t think i’d have gone

i was the epitome of a shy kid growing

i was either shy didn’t talk to anyone

or i sought attention by being the class

clown

and for some reason not raising my hand

and shouting obscene answers

seemed like a logical way to go about

making friends

and every time i crash walked by

my head became irreversibly good to the

floor

throughout my life shyness has affected

almost everything i have done

and so i understand the impact it can

have

from keeping you away from opportunities

for growth

to turning you away from nearly all

valuable chances

of developing a human connection

as a child i played

a lot i had so much fun

i learned skills and develop

self-confidence by spending time

in the garden tending to plants

and growing my own food

my grandfather was a farmer

he would grow maize and groundnuts and

sell to neighboring villages

in a small town monze

just in southern zambia

life in the village can be industrious

we never had to buy machinery because we

made our own

and in an attempt to make farming

efficient

i learned how to make holes from iron

and wood

while this only solved half of our

problems

we had a challenge water management

to my grandfather every drop counted

and we were counting every one of them

farm life in rural zambia is exciting

but there are times it gets challenging

as well

climate challenges poor infrastructure

poor resource management undermined

productivity

profitability and sustainability

there’s a need for a system that makes

this process easier

for farmers in our country

an article that was published by

fao on the future of food and farm

on the future of food and agriculture

predicts that the world we need to

produce 50 percent more food

feed and biofuel in 2050

than it did in 2012 and

in zambia there are about 600 000

small-scale farmers of which a small

fraction

are emerging farmers

problems arise during farming and the

natural watering well of our crops

gets disturbed we all know that

this industry uses a lot of water

and maybe just maybe in the near future

these wastes will represent a lot of

money

enough to pay the debt our country has

small-scale farmers like my grandfather

cannot afford irrigation computers

because they’re expensive and so i

thought to myself

what if i could design something cheaper

something better one that understands

the needs of the farmer

and the plants remember growing up as a

kid and wanting to play around

when no one taught me how to use my

imagination

i asked questions the wise i’ve always

asked

gave me the drive to turn a passion

turn a hobby into a passion a passion

that would change the industry in my

country

i was never born an exceptional student

but it did not stop me from finding

solution

to my grandfather’s problems

by the way i’m a forester an agronomist

a software developer i design

a smart chip system to minimize

input water input and human intervention

i call it netergrow

a simple microcontroller that enabled me

to create

this innovation

and you may ask yourself how does this

work

it has sensors such as temperature

humidity soil moisture

the information gathered is sent to the

heart of the system

and the decisions taken by the system

depend on the sensor’s response

what makes this innovation better is

that

it is targeting over 10 million

users in zambia

because it uses sms music notification

to control and automate the farm

now you may ask yourself what does the

future hold for this innovation

is the grass greener

this innovation will be used in farming

sports

such as climate management farm animal

management

and fireplace detection at the same time

it will be used in conjunction

with the mobile solar plant designed to

track the sun

for effective energy harvesting

they say inventions become perfect by

slow improvement

and each tape is an invention

i was never free from challenges i had

no idea how to

put this idea together and i turned to

my friends

my colleagues who suggested ways to make

this idea better

i now believe that life is easier

when you share the idea it even gets

better when you expand the circle

because anything is possible when people

support you just as my parents taught me

morals etiquette discipline safety

what if we could teach children the

lifelong ability

to innovate can children learn

systematic creativity

at such an early age

absolutely the role of young people

in shaping the world’s economy is clear

we are the largest generation of youth

in history

and given this young labor force there’s

a need to explore other ways for job

creation

this technology is important now than

before

because it is encouraging and inspiring

people

to shift from passive consumers

to active creators while at the same

time

prompting people to spend their money on

handmade

locally crafted items that are perceived

as being of higher quality

this also redefines employees as

creators

and therefore innovators and i believe

to make african creators

we need to give them platforms to create

such innovations

neta grow is changing the perception of

africans from billion users to billion

creators

in agriculture thank you

[Music]

you