Smart farming with solar powered irrigation system boosts farmers profit.

SunCulture designs and sells solar-powered irrigation systems that make it cheaper and easier for smallholder farmers to grow high-value fresh fruits and vegetables. The company’s AgroSolar Irrigation Kit increases farmer profit by $14,000 per acre per year — based on fuel, fertilizer, and labor savings and crop yield increases. SunCulture’s Co-Founders Samir Ibrahim (CEO) and Charlie Nichols (CTO) met in New York and launched SunCulture out of the New York University Stern Venture Competition. The company launched in mid-2013 and has since installed 500+ systems across Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and South Sudan. SunCulture was recently awarded $2m in funding from USAID’s Powering Agriculture program to support scaling up across the East African region. By 2030, the World Bank projects Africa’s farmers will create a trillion dollar agribusiness market if they can access the capital, knowledge and technology necessary to increase yields — which trail world averages by as much as 50%. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment in the world — almost one in every four people is undernourished. However, Africa possesses 50% of the world’s unused arable land and can feed itself — and help feed the world too. In Kenya, where SunCulture operates, 75% of the labor force is engaged in agriculture and the sector contributes 30% of GDP. Smart farming technologies like SunCulture’s solar powered irrigation systems — which increase yields by up to 300% with 80% less water than traditional farming methods and use clean and affordable solar energy — present an exciting opportunity to sustain-ably address the yield gap on millions of smallholder African farms to improve food security and enhance economic growth.More

Field Organizer and politics.

How A 2008 Field Organizer Became One Of Hillary Clinton's Top Directors.The unglamorous job of going door to door can teach you a lot about political leadership and organizing. Every morning Brynne Craig arrives at the Hillary Clinton headquarters in Brooklyn by 7 a.m. to do a load of campaign tasks—planning state outreach, reaching out to coalitions, prioritizing new small-scale projects—although they change everyday. This week, with the Democratic National Convention her schedule will be even crazier There she'll be keeping tabs on all the projects she currently mans while helping to facilitate the quadrennial conference. Craig is Clinton’s National Deputy Director of State Campaigns and Political Engagement She’s been working with the campaign on and off for nearly a decade. I recently chatted with her about her .Politics in 2016 is dizzying—social media has made it possible for more people to participate and for more constant barrages of voices. Honing this constantly changing landscape requires a knowledge of how to excite and engage people. trajectory. Field work and organizing, however, defined the political person she is today. To this day she says that being a field organizer was one of her best positions. "You had to go in everyday and organize a community. read

An entrepreneur with autism and popcorn.

Joe Steffy, who was born with down syndrome and later diagnosed with autism, was told he would likely never be hired for a normal day job. Officials at his school told him he would struggle to communicate, have a difficult time caring for himself, and likely always be dependent on others. They were right about one of those things: Steffy may never be hired.That’s because he’s too busy running his own successful company. With help from his parents, Steffy, now 30, started Poppin Joe’s Gourmet Kettle Korn in 2005. “My business works for me,” Steffy said recently. “It creates new opportunities for me to grow as a person, and to be an engaged, valued member of my community.” Today, Steffy is a sole proprietor and employs seven seasonal workers. In 2016, he brought in $67,000 in gross sales (up more than four-fold from the $15,000 he made in 2005). Steffy shared his story with the U.S. House of Representatives’ Small Business Committee in May as part of a larger conversation in Washington about why it’s important for disabled Americans to be given more exposure to entrepreneurship opportunities. “The worst disability there is that of low expectations,” Steffy told the committee. “They said I would never hold a job, that I had no attention span, could not focus, would need to live in a group home and go to a sheltered workshop. My parents disagreed.”read

AGRIBUSINESS: How to start a farm in your bedroom and make millions.

AGRIBUSINESS: How to start a farm in your bedroom and make millions. Small indoor farms in garage or bedroom are growing in popularity where vegetables and other plants are cultivated and used for salads or sandwiches and make millions are generated.This kind of farm has no fields, ploughs or even soil or sunlight. The new "vertical farm", as it is called, needs very little space and could even be located in the city. This is popularly referred to as vertical farming,the hydroponics system. This kind of farming is referred to as Controlled - environment agriculture (CEA) which means technology-based food production that provides protection to plants and maintains optimal growing conditions throughout the development of the crop. Production takes place within an enclosed growing structure such as a greenhouse or building with controlled parameters. Watch how they are producing greens in trays (http://MarxFoods.com/Farmbox-Greens) AGRIBUSINESS: How to start a farm in your bedroom and make millions. A vertical farm uses hydroponics technology with plants sitting in trays stacked vertically to save space.In hydroponics, plants are grown "using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil" (see Wikipedia here). The roots of the plant sit in water to which nutrients have been added and instead of sun, LED lights shine on the plants. The plants grown are called micro - greens and they take only two weeks to grow. The hydroponics system is a money spinner generating millions fro farmers that are using the technology in homes,bedrooms or even roof tops and how the technology can be adopted to ensure food security. See

Precision Farming The $250 Billion Market And Goldman Sachs.

Precision farming and digital agriculture will help the industry achieve this critical goal. Feeding the world’s ever increasing population is big business, but it’s also an imprecise business and as the world’s population grows, improving efficiency to lift crop yields is going to become a priority for farmers. Precision agriculture could lift crop yields 70% by 2050, creating a $240 billion market for farm tech over the same period.These figures are from a new research booklet on the topic of precision farming from Goldman Sachs. The investment bank believes that the precision farming market could offer a tremendous opportunity, for both farmers and investors. The global crop production value in 2015 was $1.2 trillion, but there’s also plenty of waste in the system. Figures show that 40% of farm fields are over fertilized resulting in a yield loss of 15% to 20% from inadequate fertilizer application. Yields could be increased by around 18% by using precision fertilizer technology. Also, precision planting could produce a 13% improvement in yield while a further 13% improvement could be achieved via a fleet of smaller automated tractors. (According to academic research cited by Goldman, soil compaction — a result of large farm equipment — has decreased yields by 15% to 20% over the years). Further, it is estimated that farmers could reduce wastewater by 50% with precision irrigation systems paired with water sensors leading to a 10% improvement in yield.Some of these technologies are already in action and will be developed and refined over the next few years to enhance the product offering.Some farmers are already making use of multi-seed planters, which have just started to enter commercial production. These planters give farmers the ability to combine properties of different seeds in one planting. Farmers have noted that are using two different seed types they can increase yields by around 3% to 8% by matching up the right seeds to the right soil types. Growers note that the optimal hybrid seed mix utilizes two seed types; an offensive and a defensive variety. more

Agricultural revolution with drones and precision farming.

New technology has an important role to play in sustainable agriculture ,the vice president of precision solutions and telematics operations Marzia said, adding that one of the most important new developments in precision farming was the advent of telematics. An agricultural revolution that uses telematics data is creating new opportunities which will require open, secure and accessible data systems. Telematics allow for the wireless transfer of data from machines at work on the field to the farm office, enabling real time monitoring and two way communications, whether for the optimization of a single machine or that of all farming processes. Ian Beecher-Jones, a precision farming consultant noted that about 60% of Britain’s farmland is being managed by precision methods, which include sensor systems, cameras, drones, microphones, virtual field maps, analytics and GPS-guided tractors. These technologies – examples of the so-called internet of things – are fueling what is being called the agricultural revolution. Clive Blacker, an arable farmer from Yorkshire, recognized about 20 years ago that change was coming. “It was 1998,” he said, “and it came being sat on the tractor seat and realizing that there was so much variability in the fields. There are the good bits and the bad bits, and we were treating them all the same way. I thought that there were better solutions for this.” Blacker began to experiment with nascent technologies like yield mapping and, in 2004, set up a small business, Precision Decisions, to supply hardware to farmers. One of the technologies he markets is the N Sensor from the German firm, Yara, which he says is being used at 250 farms in the UK. The N Sensor gives an example of the kind of precision farming technology available to farmers today. It consists of a cab-mounted tool – imagine a surfboard bolted onto the roof of a tractor – that is equipped with sensors at either end. The sensors gaze outwards, analyzing the color of a growing crop. From this data the N Sensor determines its chlorophyll content and, by an extension of logic, the crop’s nitrogen requirement. The N Sensor then relays the data to a spreader, which, in turn, applies the required dose of fertilizer to a specific part of the field. A Defra report found that 22% of farmers have GPS steering systems, 20% do soil mapping, 16% variable rate application (using technology like the N Sensor) and 11% yield mapping. Although these numbers might seem low, precision techniques are mostly used by farmers with large acreages who have greater resources to invest in the technology and make it cost effective. The agricultural revolution involve smart farming , It involves the use of miniature robots moving up and down the fields, inspecting plants and tugging out weeds. There are weather dependent sprayers and drones that hovered in the sky, relaying data to the farmhouse where charts of fields were plotted at a central hub. Sensors on animals also relays data to central hub for effective monitoring of animals on the field and on farms for different parameters. CNH Industrial offers a range of precision farming solutions spanning the crop production phases of planting, growing, harvesting and planning through the company’s global agricultural machinery brands, Case IH and New Holland Agriculture. Visit

Palm kernel cake and resolution of conflicts with Fulani herdsmen.

Palm oil is the world’s most widely produced oil, and growing global demand has naturally increased the supply of PKC. While India, Europe and China are the major palm oil importing countries, the bulk of PKC exports go to New Zealand and Europe. All over West Africa, investments are being made in palm plantations and processing plants. Of the world’s 23 major producers of PKC, 10 are West African, accounting for some 370,000 metric tons annually. Nigeria leads with 75,000 metric tons, followed by Ghana with 56,000 and the Ivory Coast with 53,000. Small exporters account for the bulk of current export figures,this is expected to change quite soon, as bigger producers enter the market. The Siat Group, with palm plantations in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria, raised Ghana’s output potential significantly when its local subsidiary, GOPDC, started the first production of pelletized PKC in 2014. Even though small farmers account for most palm oil and PKC production, big plantation investors are driving recent production increases. A significant amount of PKC is used domestically as cattle feed in Malaysia and Indonesia, where it is fed to feedlot cattle at very high levels. It is a common practice in Malaysia to produce complete feeds based on PKC, either as pellets, cubes or total mixed ration. PKC is widely known in West Africa as a viable feed ingredient, but until recently it has been mostly used as a source of energy and fiber in poultry, pig and fish rations. PKC has traditionally been used by small holders as a complimentary cattle feed source, its deployment in large herd cattle feed is a recent development. Experts believe that PKC has the potential to make West Africa self sufficient in beef production, and thus solve the major headache associated with dependence on Fulani herdsmen. West Africa also has the potential to substantially increase revenues from PKC exports. PKC has the potential to solve a major problem associated with beef supply in the sub-region. Most of West Africa’s beef consumption is supplied by semi-nomadic Fulani herdsmen, originally from the Sahelian parts of Africa, who can now be found across West and Central Africa. In recent times, they have been involved in often violent clashes with farmers of towns and villages where they have driven their cattle, destroying crops and water sources. There are regular reports of criminal behavior among the herdsmen. In April, the Nigerian president ordered a crackdown on Fulani herdsmen who had killed scores of people across the nation. In Ghana, farmers and residents of various communities have often demanded action by government against armed Fulani herdsmen who have regularly destroyed crops, polluted water sources and committed various criminal offenses. And in March, 17 people died when Fulani herdsmen clashed with crop farmers in the northeastern town of Bouna in Cote d’Ivoire. Governments are seeking to establish ranches as means of solving this problem. On May 10, 2016, Nigeria’s Minister of State, Agriculture, Heineken Lokpobiri, announced that the federal government was planning to establish cattle ranches to solve the problem of continuous clashes between the herdsmen and farmers. The Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh, announced recently that government had imported grass seedlings from Brazil, to be grown at “massive grasslots” for feeding cattle. Agricultural experts, have criticized and even derided the idea. While government officials believe that the “massive grasslots” would start producing feed for cattle within two years, most informed observers say this is highly optimistic, given the major financial problems facing government, and the logistic issues involved in implementing such a scheme. They argue that Nigeria and its West African neighbors can solve this apparently intractable problem by deploying palm kernel cake in addition to their limited grassland resources. The viability of PKC, they state, is already proven, and it can be produced in vast quantities for local cattle production, and to increase export revenue. It is an interesting fact that, for many years, West Africans have used PKC and other agricultural by-products in dry season fattening of cattle in small feedlots, where cattle are fattened for 90 to 120 days. This is done to increase weight gain, carcass quality and carcass yield. Governments resolve to stop the cross-territorial herding of cattle,can be solved by PKC .A substantial amount PKC used within Malaysia and Indonesia is used to feed dairy cows ,while in Ghana dairy production is based on imported bulk milk products and Nigeria imports 75 percent.Continue