Smart growth Agritech enhances precision farming and can create job opportunities in the process If ever Africa needed a role model to attract people into the farming sector, it would be Thulani Magida. The 37-year-old farmer, who grew up on a farm and has a master’s degree in agricultural economy and an MBA, grows vegetables and runs a piggery on 10 ha of communal land in Keiskammahoek in the Eastern Cape. He is also the founder of Juta Agritech, which incubates ‘new-era farmers’ with the goal of turning them into commercial farmers and provides them with access to technology such as drone-enabled precision farming. ‘I don’t only want to provide one element of what is needed to commercialise a farm. I want to provide training,’ he said in a recent interview with Food for Mzansi. ‘Today, there is a lot of technology but for emerging farmers, accessing technology has always been a problem because it’s expensive.’ Drone technology is but one in a long list of new technologies available to farmers, including agribots to undertake labour-intensive tasks such as weeding and harvesting; digital insurance; improved seed technology; precision irrigation; supply chain automation; and the use of AI in crop disease management. The AU and its New Partnership for Africa’s Development tapped drone technology as far back as 2018 in its Drones on the Horizon report as being transformative for the industry. Drones are considered more accurate and easier to use than satellite technology in mapping crops, providing high-definition images without being affected by cloud cover and being able to produce them at specific time intervals. Combined with AI, drones become even more valuable as a tool for farmers. Dell Technologies, for example, announced recently that it is working with Moyo – a Cape Town-based consultancy – to deploy an AI-powered autonomous drone to identify diseases in potato leaves in South Africa’s agricultural sector. The system reportedly has a 99.5% successful detection rate. Statista reveals the market for drone technology in Africa is projected to grow at a CAGR of about 5% from 2024 to 2028, and South Africa is reportedly the biggest user of drone technology on the continent. Mining is the biggest user followed by the film and entertainment industry, and then agriculture for precision-farming practices. Kopano Tholo, a drone expert at ITOO Special Risks, explains that precision farming essentially ‘means doing the right thing, in the right place, at the right time with the right amount. This results in higher profitability, better sustainability and greater productivity while saving time.’ All of which is vital in today’s agricultural sector, which has to deal with not only ever-increasing extreme weather events such as drought and flooding, but also the reality that global agricultural production will need to rise by up to 70% by 2050 to meet the needs of a growing population, 20% of whom will be based in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. Tholo says drones can be pressed into service for a number of tasks, from precision crop-spraying to soil sampling and crop field analysis. Because drones can get closer to crops than other aircraft traditionally used in crop-spraying, ‘this obviously enables more precise pesticide application and allows for close to 100% of field areas to be sprayed, whereas challenging terrain often prevents other types of aircraft from being as efficient’. In April 2024, Woolworths started providing drones to some of its suppliers as part of its Farming for the Future initiative. The drones will help the farmers detect when certain plants are under stress, enabling them to make data-driven decisions and conserve water. ‘Instead of watering all the trees all the time, the farmer can water only those that are thirsty and manage this precious resource better,’ says Latiefa Behardien, chief food technology and sustainability officer at Woolworths’ Farming for the Future programme. ‘This is just one example of how technology is transforming agriculture and paving the way for a more sustainable future. ‘We believe that technology has the power to unlock new possibilities in agriculture and drive positive change for our collective future,’ she says, adding that Farming for the Future aims ‘to empower farmers with the tools and knowledge they need to thrive in a rapidly-changing world’. One of the continent’s most prominent and successful agritech start-ups is Aerobotics, which has been developing drone and associated farming technology since it was established in Cape Town 10 years ago. According to Tracxn, the company has raised close to US$30 million, most of it in its oversubscribed Series B round in 2021, led by South Africa-based Naspers Foundry. Its tech is now used in 18 countries, from South Africa to the US west coast, and its website says its software has processed more than 100 million fruit trees and has sized more than 1 million citrus fruit. The drones are just the most visible aspect of the company’s farming technology. They are fitted with multi-spectral cameras whose data is combined with thermal imaging and satellite imagery to produce high-resolution images of fields or orchards. ‘Drones collect all that data across the farm, and we process it to build a digital model of each plant, enabling us to identify and track that plant over time: its size, how it’s growing, as well as the transpiration, fruit count and fruit size,’ says Aerobotics co-founder James Paterson, explaining the company’s AeroView farm digitalisation and data analysis platform, which provides tree-or plant-level insights. Drones offer precise crop mapping with high-definition images, unaffected by clouds, and deliver results at chosen intervals ‘With this data, we can tell the farmer [about] fruit size and count, and also whether there are limitations that they could correct to get a higher yield – with their soil or nutrition programme, for example – or if there is disease. First, we identify where they are getting sub-par yields or subpar performance, then we work with farmers to fix those problems and track over time how they are improving,’ he says. Aerobotics also partners with pest-management service provider Fieldbugs, which helps farmers fight pests such as stinkbugs and mealybugs, in an all-natural way using beneficial insects (lacewing, anagyrus, perminutus and the trissolcus wasp). Aerobotics’ drones disperse the beneficial bugs accurately and quickly. In addition, farmers can monitor their crops using the AeroView platform. Drone technology is relatively inexpensive, a cost that can generally be borne by large commercial farmers. But what about small-scale farmers, who produce more than 80% of the continent’s food supply? Akinwumi Adesina, president of the AfDB, underscored this during the 2023 Dakar Food Summit in Senegal. ‘Today we have the tech-nologies to feed Africa. We need to put them into the hands of the farmers. The technologies are working and we have to deliver them at scale.’ And here’s where innovative and passionate farmers such as Thulani Magida and his company Juta Agritech come in. ‘If businesses like Juta Agritech can have access to finance to buy the technology [and] have the skills to utilise it, then it will bypass the three hindrances that are there so we can provide the technology to emerging farmers. Then they can also be efficient and productive so that they can compete much better in the commercial market,’ says Magida. By providing drone technology as a service to farmers, he says he can demonstrate ‘how to spray, and I can say it’s working on my farm, so it works there as well. And then, if I’m doing a budget, I can show that this is the spray programme that’s costing so much, and this is how it filters into the entire business in terms of cash flows and so on’. Magida believes the new tech is useful to the farming in another respect. ‘Drone technology is one thing that can make agriculture cool,’ he says. ‘We have a lot of unemployed graduates whose perspective on agriculture is about working in the field, and that’s not exciting. But to fly a drone is just exciting in itself.’ By Robyn Leary Images: Freepik