We help African smallholder farmers adapt to climate change
Climate change shocks coupled with pests and diseases prevent
African farmers from becoming profitable enterprises
The PlantVillage solution
PlantVillage has developed a triple A model (Algorithmic Agricultural Advice) that works to increase the yield and profitability for millions of farmers. It is our goal to reach hundreds of millions in partnership with an ecosystem of farmer facing organizations and the farmers themselves. Our algorithms come from our integration of AI, satellite technology and our unique field force (the Dream Team). Once a farmer inputs 3 critical details (crop type, location, planting date) the algorithms within the PlantVillage engine can send out advice via smartphone, SMS, TV or real world social networks.
AI
Satellites
Dream
team
Artificial Intelligence
PlantVillage has created Nuru, an AI assistant for farmers. Nuru has three components to its artificial intelligence: 1) human expert level crop disease diagnostics using computer vision; 2) above human capabilities in anomaly detection and forecasting based on ground and satellite derived data; and 3) human language comprehension and automated responses to questions posed by farmers. Our AI works with extension services, governments and the UN.
Satellites continually scan African fields meaning continental wide monitoring and prediction is possible. PlantVillage utilizes many open-access tools that use remote sensing (MODIS / Landsat / NOAA / Sentinel / SMOS / FEWS NET). We leverage advances in machine learning to train on past data, so we can look into the future and predict the likelihood of an event that can impact a farmer’s yield in a positive or negative way.
PlantVillage recruits the brightest young minds coming out of agricultural universities in Kenya. These are our Dream Team - the Dream is because our dream is to see University graduates across Africa working alongside farmers to help them cope with Climate Change. The phenomenal young people help poor, oftentimes illiterate farmers and pastoralists understand pests and climate change stressors and what they can do now!
