News & Press
New app to help dairy farmers monitor animals using smartphones
Keeping dairy cows can be a lucrative venture if well monitored. For the cows to give more milk, they must be fed well, free from diseases and inseminated at the right time.
To be able to provide all this for the animal, one has to dedicate their time or hire an efficient farm manager.
However, to some farmers, such practices appear to be time-consuming. That is why most cows graze on their own under the care of some young boys who may not have an idea of when a cow is on heat, sick, hungry, and dehydrated among others.
One of the farmers facing this dilemma is Jude Senyongo, a dairy farmer based in Gayaza, who says sometimes he fails to notice when the cow is on heat because cows are grazing on their own under the care of a certain young man.
“I work somewhere so the only time I dedicate to my cows is on Saturday afternoon and Sunday, however, sometimes I can’t tell which animal is sick. I get to learn of this after some time when for example time for artificial insemination has past and when for those that are sick are weaker,” Senjonjo says.
To help such farmers keep their cattle in check, the Korean government through the Korea Uganda Dairy Project working with the College of Medicines Animal Resources and Biosecurity at Makerere University are piloting the use of smartphones to help such farmers monitor their animals away from home.
While training dairy farmers at the Makerere University Agriculture Research Institute (MUARIK) in Kabanyoro, Dr Ha W. James from the Korean Vet Clinic said the application will enable farmers to monitor their cattle’s health from wherever they are through a smartphone.
How it works
According to Dr. Ha, the smartphone is attached to a sensor that is inserted in the body of an animal. That way any changes in the body are sent directly to the farm owner’s phone as a short message for action.
“For dairy farming, no data means no insemination, no calf, no milk, and no money for the farmers so the app shows the farmers the importance of getting timely information in farming,” he explained.
He added that the technology is already being used in Korea and Japan to manage large farms and this has helped them remain efficient and productive.
Dr. Ha said the app will give the farmers real-time information to take action on their animals and also reduce costs since the cows will be monitored and catered for in the proper manner.
In Uganda, the application will is being piloted at a demonstration farm at Nakyesesa, a research station on animal feeds under NARO before it can be rolled out.
Apart from the app, farmers were introduced to ways of minimising costs on the farm like the use of sawdust and coffee husks on the floor instead of using concrete, how to feed calves, dairy cows, and monitoring their gestation period, among others.
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The A-Z about irrigation
Rony Oved is an Israeli irrigation investor working in Uganda. Harvest Money talked to him about irrigation systems.
Please explain why Uganda has not successfully managed to take up the irrigation solution?
Water is life; it is obviously a key component of welfare in communities’ development. Lately, we are waking up from ignorance of the fact that today farming and agriculture in general cannot rely on rain, while production of food is needed in increased demand.
In my country Israel, a small semi-arid country, we have never had the luxury of taking water for granted. Under the pressure of limited rainfall and few water resources with a rapidly growing population, the country’s water management and technology has become among the most efficient and cost effective in the world. In Israel every farm even in the corner of up country gets water from the national water company, clean source of purified recycled water that is supplied to the farmers to easily apply irrigation in the farm. From vegetables to banana, potato, avocado, orange, mango orchards you name it, all grow under irrigation. No other way can be considered.
For us in Uganda, it is important first to define the terminology of the water chain processes. Let us differentiate between two main elements in the water and irrigation chain.
Water management is usually a subject handled under the water ministry, where its main role is to avail water for general community development, deliver water to villages or develop water sources of nearby communities. This can be done via boreholes, rain conservation to dams, open reservoirs or recycling water and then pumping it to the communities farming areas.
So when the government builds a dam it is water management (availing water to an area), but it is not an irrigation project as they call it?
Irrigation is usually a subject promoted by the agriculture ministry as a way of bringing controlled amounts of water to the farm at regular intervals for agricultural use. Assisting in growing crops in general, the goal is to supply the entire field uniformly with water, so that each plant has the amount of water it needs; by the way as you know Joshua, every plant needs different amount of water per day. Our experience shows that a one-acre of vegetable garden needs a minimum of 3,000 litres per day, while one banana plant needs minimum of 2.5 litres of water per a day.
The irrigation solution is a form of a “replacement or supplementation of rainwater to the direct to the plant” with different source of water. The main idea behind irrigation on systems is that your plants are maintained with the minimum to optimum amount of water required. An irrigation system should help conserve water, while saving farmers time, money, preventing weed growth and increasing the growth rate.
Water for Irrigation can come from the ground (extracted from springs or by using wells), from the surface water (withdrawn from rivers, lakes or reservoirs) or from non-conventional sources like treated waste water, desalinated water or drainage water. In all the above cases, water needs to be gathered to main reservoir and from there to the plants.
After appreciating the two different roles of the ministries, we can move to understand the different irrigation solutions we can find and in what crop it can be used. But let us not forget a very important point which our Ugandan clients do not take into consideration: What quantity of water you have available in units?
Every farmer needs to investigate and get the quantity of water they can harvest every day; this important point will determine how many acres they can grow.
Various types of irrigation techniques are available; farmers should choose the right solution. In order to obtain the right irrigation system, let us paint a clear picture in the farmer’s mind and remember, irrigation is a way to distribute water within the field to the crop.
...ICT a sure way to improve agriculture extension services
Information technology and related innovations have got a big role to play in the improvement of agriculture extension services in the country.
This was emphasised by various speakers during an awards function for various winners of the 2021 UFAAS Hackathon recently. The competition involved tens of teams that were tasked to develop ICT-based innovations that can improve agriculture extension services.
“We cannot hide away from the changing face of technology but rather we have to adopt them and use them to improve our operations as farmers,” Silim Nahday, the Uganda Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (UFAAS) executive director, said. He explained that ICT can easily improve access to farming information. The winning teams were awarded with sh2m while the runners-up bagged sh1m each.
At the country level, UFAAS represents African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS) in Uganda. The AFAAS Continental Hackathon 2021 has 10 countries participating with each conducting her own National-level Hackathon.
The 10 countries are Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Ethiopia, South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Mali. Hackathon winners in each country get a chance to further compete at a continental level and a possibility of having their IT solutions adapted by 10 African countries.
...In Uganda, according to Beatrice Luzobe, the UFAAS chief executive officer, the national-level Hackathon called “UFAAS Hackathon 2021” was organised by UFAAS, together with Dostrim Limited – an ICT firm, that provided the technical support in facilitating a virtual hackathon event from October 04 to October 11, with a core goal of “Digitalizing Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services for Effective Service Delivery”.
“For purposes of covering a broader perspective of AEAS, three categories were formed and participants were given the option to select only one category under which to compete or pitch their ICT solutions,” Samuel Grace Muyinda from Dostrim Limited said.
These included; management of AEAS actors’ database and activities; database of CSA techniques, approaches and knowledge; and meteorological and weather information systems coupled with crop calendar. AFAAS also promoted open source concepts among developers in the agriculture sector as a way to speed up growth of the ecosystem of ICT innovations in Africa for improved uptake of climate-smart agricultural technologies and practices.
Muyinda said 40 participants registered to compose a total of 18 teams; 11 teams fully participated on Day 1 and 2 of the Hackathon; 8 teams (comprising of 29 participants) submitted at least a concept note of their solutions/projects; and 5 teams emerged as finalists.
FarmSoko by Team Butterscotch
Muyinda said FarmSoko is a digital platform that enables farmers to conveniently find and book services of agricultural extension and advisory services (AEAS) providers in their common locality. The platform leverages existing USSD mobile telephony technologies and registered AEAS workers’ database to create a network that works together to improve accessibility for farmers to specialised AEA services.
Farmer Graphical Directory Services (FGD)
Price ignorance, inaccessibility to market as farmers only focus on markets close to them and yet this could be affected by surplus in supply, ignorance or inadequate information about climate and soil types which support particular agricultural activities.
FGD Services have designed a graphical directory for farmer and farm services, where farmers represented on the map may have their hands raised; a hand raised implies a farmer has a produce to supply. The farmer details including the type of produce and animal the farmer has is present on the map, as one hovers over a farmer.
AgroAid App
AgroAid App and System has been designed in a way to enable users choose language of preference as they navigate through. Languages so far deployed are English, Luganda, Swahili French and Portuguese. For the first time interacting with the system, the user is required to Register with just a phone number and Password. This is to ease usability, especially with rural farmers who may not have an e-mail.
Users are also tasked with choosing the line of agriculture they operate, either crops or animals, and then specify the crops and or animals they deal in. For each animal or crop selected, a farmer is required to feed in how old the crops or animals are. Using the period entered, the AgroAid system is able to provide information on the recommended farming practices, likely diseases and pests. A farmer is able to read in detail about each disease, its causes, how to treat and prevent them. He or she is able to read more farming practices and farming systems.
Auto-FarmUg
Auto-Farm Irrigation System focuses on improving water usage through monitored sensor readings used to specific quantities of water needed and supporting produce related decision-making using an online data reporting system for the sensor-captured field data.
The project is focused towards a smart irrigation system for a sustainable practice of agriculture. It relies on three modules as described below;
Smart Crop Calendar
In developing countries, the agricultural sectors lag behind in regard to leveraging technology as an enabler to foster smarter farming and bumper harvests.
This is largely because farmers do not have access to information and also there is a lack of important infrastructure to effect better decision making in the agricultural sector that is based on available evidence aggregated by collected data. Thus making it harder for stakeholders within the sector to make informed decisions. The majority of the people in developing countries are small scale farmers and they lack information about climatic changes, crop calendar, when to irrigate and so on.
Whereas at the national level, there is a lack of accurate data about climatic changes. The agricultural practices by farmers to some extent influence the climatic changes, therefore there is need for continuous collection and monitoring of data from the fields.
Therefore, this project aims primarily to improve data collection by use of various sensors like soil moisture sensors, soil water content and threshold, heat sensors, reduce on-farm resource wastage, to save money, and improve yields using IOT wireless precision irrigation. Secondly, to reduce labour and to increase participation in agriculture.
Andrew Mamawi from Team Butter Scotch, one of the winners, pointed out that such competitions will spur ICT innovations that will help digitise the agricultural sector.
MAAIF to boost indigenous acaricides producer
Agriculture minister Hon Frank Tumwebaze has promised to facilitate the growth of Sanga Vetchem Limited, an indigenous company that produces chemical agents used to kill ticks.
He also promised that if all goes to plan, the ministry will partner with them to address the problem of ticks that continue to derail the livestock sub-sector.
The minister said this on a tour of the company’s production line at Namanve. He was in the company of Dr. Anna Rose Ademun, the commissioner for Animal Health, as well as a team of MPs from cattle corridor districts.
This comes on the back of the minister’s countrywide familiarization tour in which several farmers told him ticks and tick-borne diseases are some of the leading dangers to cattle.
Therefore, the emergence of companies like Sanga Vetchem Limited may go a long way in mitigating the situation by providing quality acaricides.
What is left for the company is to secure approval from the National Drug Authority (NDA) before rolling out the products on the market.
“This facility has the ability to get rid of Uganda’s tick problem and the ministry will partner with you to make sure that quality and affordable acaricides are available on market,” he said. Hon Tumwebaze also appreciated the fact that the private sector is producing acaricides within the country, saving the government from the business of importing acaricides. “I thank the Ugandan private sector who heeded to the president’s call from import substitution to manufacturing. The future is bright. This is a state-of-the-art factory and I have no doubt the problem of ticks will be dealt with sustainably,” he said
...IRRIGATION
In the recent past, Uganda has experienced climate change and variability which impelled Government to support farmers with small scale on-farm demonstrations for solar powered irrigation systems to avert the adverse effects of climate change.
The support targets both crop and livestock farmers in areas with long dry spells for crop irrigation and livestock watering in cattle corridors.
The solar water pumping systems provided by NAADS are strictly for demonstration purposes to enable farmers in communities to adapt to the system. The support is given to farmers on cost sharing basis with NAADS providing the water pumping system and giving guidance to farmers on how to develop the downstream watering system or the reticulation networks.
On the other hand, the beneficiary farmers are expected to work on the downstream reticulation systems with technical support from NAADS.
The initiative also supports the communities with water as a Social Corporate Responsibility strategy by NAADS.
To date, 68 solar water pumping systems have been distributed.
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What a farmer needs to know about the Solar Water Pumping System
- The system can be installed in any part of the country
- There should be at least 6 hours of solar radiation on average a day
- The system converts solar energy from the sun into electric energy that pumps the water
- Water is pumped into a water reservoir from where its used for different purposes on the farm (crop irrigation or livestock watering)
Criteria for selection of beneficiaries
The support is demand driven with farmers expected to express interest. Individual farmers can present requests direct to NAADS or the district Local governments express interest on behalf of the farmers through their priorities. The following are a must for farmer beneficiaries;
- Not less than 5 acres of farm land
- Reliable source of water at the farm in form of a borehole, dam or non-seasonal stream
Both Individual and farmers in groups can access the equipment
Ugandan farmers push back against COVID-19 to feed hungry population
KAMPALA, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- As the world commemorates World Food Day on Saturday, farmers in Uganda are beating all odds occasioned by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to feed a hungry population.
After COVID-19 broke out in Uganda in March 2020, the pandemic has disrupted the agri-food systems, posing a threat to the country's food security, experts said.
...The country's trade in agriculture inputs and produce was affected as public and private transport were closed due to lockdown measures.
Antonio Querido, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) representative in Uganda said although the pandemic has exposed the fragility of societies, it has also shown how people can come together towards a common goal.
"As a global community, we can overcome these challenging times and create a better future, one that is more sustainable for present and future generations," Querido said, noting this year's World Food Day commemorations focus on raising awareness of the need to support the transformation to more efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agri-food systems for better production, nutrition, environment, and a better life.
Bright Rwamirama, Uganda's minister of state for animal industry said the transformation of agri-food systems is critical as the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Preserving access to safe and nutritious food is and will continue to be an essential part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly for the poor and vulnerable communities, which are hit hardest by the pandemic and resulting economic shocks," the minister said.
As countries begin to develop and implement COVID-19 recovery plans, he said it is also an opportunity to build improved food systems that are resilient to shocks.
According to government figures, over 70 percent of the country's population derive their livelihood from agriculture. Enditem
Food Experts in Uganda Say They Want Farmers’ Opinions Before Introducing Innovations
KAMPALA, UGANDA — As climate change continues to hit farmers because of erratic weather conditions, researchers believe there is a need to not only improve agricultural innovation but seek farmers’ opinions before introducing new farming methods.
...Hadijah Naigaga has been a banana farmer for over 10 years. With Uganda experiencing erratic rainfall in some parts of the country and prolonged dry seasons, Naigaga says her garden was not spared.
She says there used to be huge banana plantations but they have collapsed. First, we had a prolonged dry spell and the plantation dried up, she says. Then, the rain was so heavy and the trees fell down. I had calculated that I would make a profit of between $3 and $6. But you realize that where you calculated $6, you have nothing. The trees are gone, she says.
Antonio Querido, the Food and Agriculture Organization representative in Uganda, says in order to have better production, nutrition, environment and life, there’s a need to transform agri-food systems. That would ensure that everyone has access to enough affordable, safe and nutritious food to lead an active and healthy life. According to the FAO, 690 million people suffer from hunger worldwide and that number has increased due to the coronavirus pandemic.
However, Querido said the agri-food systems are also contributing to climate change and that calls for better ways in the long term to produce safe and nutritious food.
“We need to invest more in research and development, to make farming more technology-advanced. We need innovation in digital agriculture to improve literacy rates among women. Because these can only go a long way in reducing hunger,” Querido said.
Ambrose Agona, the director general of the National Agricultural and Research Organization, says that while Uganda is considered a food basket for the Eastern African region, the question now is on the quality of food.
He says to ensure farmers grow quality of food, researchers need to talk with farmers, who often apply indigenous methods to raising crops.
“So, for instance, you’re talking about adaptation maybe to climate change. They have, for instance, certain crops, sorghum, finger millet, ground nuts, pigeon peas. They have been actually drought tolerant. But now, the farmers will be saying, if this newly improved variety is actually tolerant to climate change, how does it compare to ours,” Agona said.
According to the FAO, $40 to $50 billion must be invested worldwide to end hunger by 2030.
In Uganda, efforts are focused on training farmers and improving methods to produce information that leads to early warning systems to help them plan and anticipate the impacts of climate change.
That would be in addition to supporting post-harvest management and collective marketing to drive economic success and reduce poverty among farmers.