The CropWatch Africa difference
Cropwatch Africa is a specialised service provider, and its focus is to support governments, stakeholders, and industries goals across Southern Africa to safeguard resources by ensuring that invasive pests and diseases are detected as soon as possible before they have a chance to cause significant damage.
Efficiently monitoring of pest populations is the first line of defence against damage. Its detection efforts increase the likelihood that pests will be noticed successfully while populations are still localised, and population levels are not beyond that which can be contained or possibly eradicated. In addition, the costs associated with eradication and control efforts, are typically far more than those of long-term surveillance.
Cropwatch Africa has developed proprietary cloud and mobile-based platforms to assist with the capturing, storage, and geographical display of all data in near real-time coupled with satellite imagery and detailed reporting for governments, farmers, researchers, and industries to make timely and actionable decisions. Cloud-based solutions and mobile apps are highly customisable, based on needs and requirements.
In partnership with the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute (Fabi) at the University of Pretoria ways to develop research and service platforms to address national plant health management needs in agriculture and forestry, integrated plant health-related data systems, develop pest and disease diagnostic and monitoring tools and to develop capacity for plant health management are being explored. Fabi director, Prof Bernard Slippers, said this was a rich opportunity to serve national and pan-African needs in industry and government, while also advancing frontier research and advanced training in the field of plant health.
Recently CropWatch Africa also appointed InteliGro to promote the CropWatch Africa (Crop Scout) farmer platform in South Africa through the vast agent network of InteliGro. The combination of InteliGro and CropWatch Africa with regard to knowledge and technology, makes it easy for producers to use the system as an instrument for yield optimisation and the production of quality crops for both local and export markets. The system allows producers to assign tasks to farmers as well as input suppliers in reaction to field collected data streamlining response times on the farm to possible pest or disease outbreaks.
With the user-friendly farmer platform producers can view farm data collected in the field in near real-time which provides them with the ability to make informed decisions on their farm quicker. The result, producers have real insight into crop status, pest, or disease patterns as well as historic patterns all from their smart phone or computer.
Roedolf Nieuwenhuis, founder and managing director of CropWatch Africa, said, “Our farmer platform, which we have developed over the past few years with farmers’ input, provides farmers in Southern Africa with a highly adaptable, precision agricultural solution that is suitable for local conditions. developed as an alternative to solutions that are available internationally but may be difficult to adapt. It is an all-in-one, integrated platform that allows a farmer to keep an eye on farm status and use powerful reporting features to analyse data as it is captured.”
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