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Agricultural Data Analytics: Knowledge and decision support

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EcoProMIS: a strategic alliance with Colombian rice and oil palm farmers and their federations

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Libardo Ochoa García, Colombia Project Officer, Agricompas

The Ecological Production Management Information System, EcoProMIS, is a project implemented in Colombia and co-financed by the United Kingdom Space Agency (UKSA).

Agricompas has been developing the EcoProMIS idea over the last four years, with the support and collaboration of Colombian institutions Cenipalma, Fedearroz, CIAT and Solidaridad, and the companies IWCO and Pixalytics in the UK.

Collecting Farm Data
At the end of the EcoProMIS project, in 2022, a “platform” will be created that collects, with the active support of growers, agronomic field data and correlates it with meteorological and environmental data, as well as with satellite and drone earth observation data.

EcoProMIS processes this rice and oil palm production data in near real-time crop production knowledge with the help of crop models and algorithms (mathematical information processes).

Knowledge to Support Farmers
The above agronomic knowledge is combined with environmental, market and socio-economic knowledge, to generate practical information for decision-making in rice and oil palm crops.

Colombian rice and oil palm farmers will receive crop production knowledge to support their decision making at no cost, as long as they share and upload their crop data on the EcoProMIS platform. For each farmer and each plot, detailed supportive information will be generated.

A Strategic Alliance
The knowledge services that EcoProMIS will provide to growers are developed in close collaboration with our partners; the rice and oil palm growers and their federations. EcoProMIS activities include workshops in Casanare, Meta, Tolima and Magdalena wherein growers are interviewed and trained in data collection, concepts and ideas are shared, and partners participate in the development and testing of new knowledge services.

Knowledge Services
The EcoProMIS team are currently developing the first ‘knowledge services’ for rice and oil palm. These services predict yield and calculate water demand in both crops. Yield prediction is important for the grower to understand if the crop is performing well and if this is not the case to investigate limiting growth factors.

Further it helps the farmer with planning the harvest and processing logistics. Regarding crop water requirement; the farmers will be able to establish in time how much additional water is required in irrigated and rainfed systems per crop cycle for rice and per year for oil palm. Water is fast becoming a scarce commodity.

Support with Drought
A practical example of applying EcoProMIS knowledge in daily life by Colombian farmers can be illustrated with recent events during the first half of 2020. Rainfall was scarce and the average annual rainfall is expected to be below the historical average. The questions arise, how will water shortage affect the rice and oil palm crops? And how much water is available for agriculture or industry?

With the EcoProMIS platform, farmers will have access to near real-time knowledge about crop water needs vs. the expected rainfall and thus be able to make better management decisions. This will help farmers to decide whether or not to invest in or use irrigation. In addition the grower could use the information of water shortage to justify a yield loss claim in case of insurance against drought.

A Joint Sustainable Future
After the project is finished by mid 2022 Agricompas will commercialise the platform as the new independent knowledge creator and broker in the crop value chain. We will provide “Knowledge for Free” to our grower and federation partners and “Decisions for a Fee” to major value chain players such as input and equipment providers, insurers and banks, and processors and traders. Our ultimate goal is to empower and support growers and increase their productivity and profits while reducing the environmental impact and improve the socio-economic conditions of all stakeholders.

Managing complexity to ensure optimisation

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Sam Adams, Project Manager, Agricompas

It was six weeks ago that I joined Agricompas, becoming the EcoProMIS Project Manager. It was also exactly six weeks ago when the COVID-19 lockdown began here in the UK.

For all of us, these are unfamiliar times and starting this role has been a surreal experience. While I have engaged immediately and enthusiastically, social distancing has meant that I have not been able to meet any colleagues, let alone collect my new laptop! Instead, the last six weeks have been a constant roll of virtual meetings, Skype calls, and digital file sharing.

An Exciting and Demanding Project in Colombia

The Ecological Production Management Information System, or EcoProMIS, is an exciting and complex project, bringing with it great opportunities as well as unique challenges. Spanning two continents, time zones and languages, and working in remote rural locations, our work is full of management and logistical challenges. Add to this our use of cutting-edge technology, collecting vast amounts of satellite and UAV (drone) data, crop modelling, and IT architecture, EcoProMIS is a demanding initiative.

We work in a diverse consortium, which is a major strength of the project and also requires ongoing and clear communication and project management. The consortium includes the national federations of rice (Fedearroz) and palm oil (Cenipalma) in Colombia and CIAT, a scientific centre. Pixalytics work with the satellite EO (earth observation) data and IWCO with IT. Solidaridad provide socio-economic expertise, while Agricompas provides management and leadership.

Sam Adams joins Agricompas from ILRI, the International Livestock Research Institute

The context of lockdown has added to the complexity of our work at EcoProMIS. The corona pandemic has been a huge shakeup for our whole planet and I know that we are all facing increased complexity in both our personal and professional spheres.

For a Project Manager, I believe that one of the key functions is to help bring structure and clarity to complexity. That has certainly been a big part of my work over the last six weeks. To help deliver this clarity, while ensuring we meet our milestones on time and to budget, I have prioritised four tasks that will benefit the optimisation of our project:

Information Gathering and Project Management

My first task has been information gathering. The time difference between the UK and Colombia means that the mornings are frequently used for research and learning. Each afternoon, as my colleagues in Colombia start work, I look forward to regular phone calls to build connection and hear each other’s priorities, needs and challenges.

Secondly, the complexity of our project and its layers of work packages, milestones and tasks, are benefiting from a new and improved project management system. Based on the cloud, this is being shared with our entire team so that there is clarity over each other’s tasks, responsibilities and schedules.

Increased Internal and External Communication

The third task to help manage complexity has been to introduce a new system of internal communication and reporting, ensuring it is regular and sustainable. I am pleased to say we have a new and clear reporting schedule that mitigates the challenges of complexity through maximising transparency.

This updated communication schedule will both connect us professionally and connect us personally, as we create space for listening and for cultural exchange. Another way I am doing this is by using more Spanish in our meetings (¡Estoy haciendo lo mejor que puedo!).

Finally, we are engaging in more external communication. A new communications plan is being developed and this blog has been kick-started with a regular schedule of stimulating content to look forward to. Likewise, our social media channels have been revamped to further aid our storytelling. You can follow the EcoProMIS Twitter account here. By the end of the year we aim to launch a movie telling the EcoProMIS story.

A Time of Hope

Coronavirus has certainly added to the complexity of all of our lives. At the same time, it presents a forced slowing down and with this, an opportunity to take a breath, to catch up with backlogged tasks, and to reorganise and improve systems.

I feel that I have joined the EcoProMIS team at a golden time, not at a time of hopelessness, but one of reflection and hope. In this period of lockdown, it is a gift for us to bring new systems of management and storytelling, and by doing so navigate our way through complexity so that on the other side, we are stronger.

“Las cuentas, claras, y el chocolate, espeso”

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By Annie Zamora, Principal Researcher, FEDECACAO

Anyone who has travelled to Colombia may have come across this local saying, which roughly translates as “I like my stories clear and my chocolate, thick.” It highlights the Colombian people’s preference for clarity and blunt talking. The saying also hints at our country’s passion for chocolate – we consume 50,000 tonnes of cacao annually, which is around a kilo per person.

But unlike Europeans, mostly we drink it rather than eat it. Drinking chocolate has a long tradition across the country. We typically start the day with a cup of hot chocolate for breakfast. In the afternoon, we have a tradition called “tomar las onces” (elevenses) which involves drinking chocolate with a snack like an arepa or an almojabana. If you come to the main office of FEDECACAO here in Bogotá in the morning, you can enjoy a delicious hot chocolate with bread.

A typical morning in FEDECACAO

At FEDECACAO, the Federación Nacional de Cacaoteros, we’re passionate about cacao, but even more passionate our improving the lives of cacao smallholder farmers.

Growing cacao in tropical environments can be difficult. Our farmers must constantly be on the lookout for pests and disease, they must fertilise the soil around the trees and – given most cacao grows near the equator – they must shield their cacao crops from the burning sun. Producing cacao pods also takes time; a cacao tree normally doesn’t reach maturity until it’s at least 3 or 4 years old. Our cacao farmers also live in remote areas with many social issues – many of them been badly affected by the decades-long armed conflict here in Colombia.

Despite these challenges, FEDECACAO has continued to provide support to cacao growers over the country. Since 2013, we have seen production increasing, and the lives of our smallholders have begun to improve. But there’s still much more work to be done.

That’s why FEDECACAO is excited to be part of the “Digitising of cacao production” project, together with our partner organisations in Colombia and the UK. Helping our farmers get the resources, knowledge and skills they need to ensure the highest yields will hopefully start to transform the sector and ensure a sustainable supply of cocoa for chocolate lovers, both in Colombia and around the world.

Hatching the proof of concept for sustainable agriculture

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Roelof Kramer, CEO of Agricompas and Project Lead of EcoProMIS

The global corona crisis has a severe impact on our daily lives. National lockdowns are restricting travel and preventing us from seeing family and friends. It is scary and depressing how control of our daily lives has vanished without warning.

That’s why I bought ten fertilised chicken eggs on the internet and placed them in an incubator. Always good to have something to look forward to! Three weeks later my children hatched five healthy chicks which are now under a heat lamp provided with ample feed and water.

But wait! Did we really do that properly? In the middle of the night my wife had to check if the chicks were not too hot or cold, hungry or thirsty. Of course, they were all fine but “better safe than sorry” especially when growing crops or raising livestock as we do in agriculture.

The challenge of sustainability
For decades now our planet has had to feed increasingly more people while its resources are more and more strained. As a result, we are faced with deforestation, biodiversity loss, people displacement and soil & air pollution.

Although we see examples daily, little is done to create more sustainable systems as economic interests compete severely with social and environmental interests which are difficult to express in financial metrics.

On the one hand it is not in the short-term interest of politicians nor corporates to sacrifice public electability or shareholder profits while on the other hand NGOs, philanthropists or the angered public lack the resources, organisation and reach.

As a result, we create partial and disjointed solutions that reduce problems rather than solving them in a whole system approach.

The idea behind EcoProMIS
In 2016 Agricompas hatched the concept of an Ecological Production Management Information System or “EcoProMIS”. It is a system that can create valuable solutions while combining the competing interests of the different stakeholders in one commercially viable business model.

EcoProMIS is a data analytics platform that processes comprehensive crop data as detailed as per-field-in-near-real-time. It provides “Knowledge for Free” to growers & partners and “Decisions for a Fee” to stakeholders across the entire crop value chain.

These services aim to improve the efficiency of economic, technical, social and environmental processes.

Government support and funding
A project proposal was successfully submitted to the UK Space Agency in 2017 for four million pounds of funding in the International Partnership Program (IPP2).

EcoProMIS received this funding in order to improve the productivity and profitability of rice and oil palm growers in Colombia while minimising environmental impact and improving socio-economic conditions of the crops’ stakeholders.

From February 2018 onwards Agricompas and six partners including Pixalytics (UK), Cenipalma, CIAT, Fedearroz, IWCO and Solidaridad (Colombia) have been executing the 50-month project in Colombia with a delivery date by end March 2022.

Thereafter Agricompas will continue to operate the “commercial” EcoProMIS platform for the benefit of its users – partners such as the 16,000 rice growers, 5,000 palm growers and their federations and customers such as the input and & equipment manufacturers, traders & processors, banks & insurers, wholesalers & distributors, and governments & NGOs.

Taking action
During the last two years we have been installing professional equipment to collect weather and greenhouse gas data at four different locations across Colombia. We are building cloud-based IT architecture and applications to process data with machine learning and Artificial Intelligence into knowledge.

We are developing completely new offerings and testing these with prospective customers in a solid business model, while aware that this is a massively complex and ambitious project.

During the next two years we will continue to refine and optimise data collection, deepen the data processing, and test our offerings and business model.

Communicating our work
We want to share the exciting and ambitious work that we are doing. That is why, from now on each of the project partners will write a series of regular blogs about their organisation, activities, experiences and objectives within the EcoProMIS project.

Over the past two years, we have attended numerous expos and agricultural forums to share about our work.

Roelof Kramer, the EcoProMIS project lead and Agricompas CEO, in the British Embassy stand at the Agrofuturo 2019 exhibition in Medellin, Colombia

Hope for a better future
Yes, the world is going through a rough time and it is very depressing that even with our good intentions sustainable agriculture currently doesn’t exist. Across the world, we lack the comprehensive and detailed data collection, and the processing of data into knowledge and viable business models to offer services that satisfy all crop system stakeholders.

EcoProMIS is more than “just another project” that finishes when the funding runs out. It is a solid promise that is being developed by motivated partners into a whole system approach that creates true sustainable agriculture: a system that supports poor and rich growers, unites commercial and non-commercial parties, and supports NGOs and governments.

That is something really fantastic to look forward to! I wish you and your family health, hope and happiness.

Recognising Women’s Work in Cocoa Production

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By Deborah Foy, Agricompas

Today is International Women’s Day. It’s also the end of the Fairtrade Fortnight campaign, “She Deserves”. Over the past two weeks, some powerful stories have been shared of the farmers behind our chocolate bars, farmers who are often exploited and underpaid. Farmers like Edith, a cocoa producer in Côte d’Ivoire who is passionate about helping other farmers in her community to build better lives for themselves and their families.

https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/get%20involved//Current-campaigns/Fairtrade-Fortnight/Meet-the-Fairtrade-Farmers

Around the world, women’s labour is a crucial part of the cocoa value chain. However, this contribution is often unrecognised. Fairtrade’s recent report, “The Invisible Women Behind Our Chocolate”, highlights that women carry out 68% of the labour in cocoa farming, but earn only around 21% of the income.

At Agricompas, we are keen to increase the participation and visibility of women in the cocoa value chain. We agree with Fairtrade that unlocking the power of women will be key to accelerating the rate of progress for communities.

In Colombia, working in partnership with Fedecacao and Solidaridad, we conducted research last year in two cocoa-growing communities in Santander and Valle de Cauca. We wanted to understand the gender divisions of labour in cocoa – in particular, producers’ roles and responsibilities within cocoa production, as well as the gender dynamics of household responsibilities and domestic tasks. Our research was funded by the UK’s Prosperity Fund for Colombia, which recognises that gender equality and women’s economic empowerment are key drivers of inclusive growth.

Monica Cortes from the UK Embassy in Colombia helps to faciliate a Gender and Inclusion workshop in Tuluá, Valle de Cauca

It was no surprise to learn that women play an important role in cocoa production in both communities. They are particularly involved in early crop care and in maintenance activities such as weeding and pruning, which are critical to enhancing future crop yields and final production of quality beans. Women also play an important role in post-harvest activities.

In Valle de Cauca, for example, women are largely responsible for the process of selecting and packaging the beans for sale. In Santander, less than 5% of the male cocoa farmers we interviewed are involved in post-harvest activities; the job of shelling cocoa cobs, fermentation and bean drying largely falls to women. These tasks are also critical for quality, since beans must be dried slowly to lose humidity and acidity, taking care to prevent internal or external fungus from ruining the beans.

Producers in Santander participating in one of the project’s Gender and Inclusion workshops

Cultural norms in Colombia also act as barriers for women in cocoa-growing communities. Alongside their participation in cocoa production, women are engaged in household duties and care work that enables other labourers to be productive. In Santander, unpaid domestic household activities are much more likely to be performed by women. In Valle de Cauca, the female farmers that participated in our study were entirely responsible for cooking and cleaning, as well as doing laundry, ironing clothes and caring for grandchildren. These cultural norms are limiting women’s access to economic opportunities. For example, 80% of the women we interviewed stated that taking care of dependents is a barrier to their participation in cocoa crop activities.

The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is, “An equal world is an enabled world.” Our research in Colombia has shown us that women are at the heart of cocoa production. We must now work with our partners and others in the value chain to make sure that women are visible and that their contribution is recognised.

Experts from the Reading Cocoa Group share knowledge and insights with smallholder cacao producers in Colombia

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Cacao beans. Photo Credit, FEDECACAO

By Deborah Foy, Agricompas

The Reading Cocoa Group is a globally important centre for cocoa research and a leading force behind the development of more sustainable cocoa farming practices. Led by Professor Paul Hadley, the Reading Cocoa Group focusses on quantifying yield-determining processes in cocoa, particularly in the context of climate change. A key focus is higher productivity and greater resilience to unfavourable climatic conditions.

In December 2019, Professor Paul Hadley and colleagues joined a field trip to Colombia. They participated in high-level discussions with Agrosavia around the impact of climate change on cacao production and travelled to Rionegro in Santander to meet farmers and partners participating in the ‘Digitisation of Cacao’ project.

Led by Agricompas, ‘Digitisation of Cacao’ is funded by the Prosperity Fund’s AgriTech Catalyst. The project aims to use digital technologies to boost Colombia’s huge potential to become a major global cocoa producer. The University of Reading is a key partner in this innovative, multi-stakeholder partnership. Over a period of 18 months, the University will bring its international expertise in crop modelling to improve the sustainability of the cocoa sector in Colombia.

Professor Handley (right) visiting a cocoa field trial site in Rionegro, Santander together with Agricompas CEO Roelof Kramer (left)

Professor Hadley comments: “Cacao farmers in Colombia are hampered by a lack of scientific knowledge and analysis on the crop at farm level. The platform being developed by the project partners will allow for the storage, monitoring and analysis of various climatic and soil factors – all of which have the capacity to influence the optimal growth and production of cacao. Combined with further advances in machine modelling and artificial intelligence, this will enable farmers to optimise cocoa production, enhancing their commercial viability.”

Professor Hadley continues, “It’s exciting to see the potential that is realised when you harness the power of data. But in tropical environments such as the ones I visited on my trip to Colombia, collecting accurate data is not without its challenges. We’re working alongside other partners in the consortium – and applying the latest in digital technologies – to see how best we can respond to this challenge and translate data into knowledge and insight.