smart agriculture myanmar (SAM)

Start date

March 2018

Duration & Stage

3 years, Phase 1

Funding Stage

Partially Funded

Objective         

 

Integration of satellite based data insights to offer scalable farming advice and stimulate financial inclusion

Partners

  • Satelligence, satellite image expert – satellite images and insights, algorithms to improve data insights

  • Financial Access, financial service provider – credit risk modelling and loan product development

  • Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation – agriculture extension

  • Wageningen University, Agricultural university – assistance on agricultural models

  • Center for Economic and Social Development - training & capacity building

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Project description

The Smart Agriculture Myanmar (SAM) program helps smallholder farmers in Myanmar by developing state-of-the-art technologies that assist them through their smartphone. These services focus on two topics; scalable farming advice and financial inclusion. The program works with maize farmers in Shan State and paddy farmers from Bago Division. A total of more than 500.000 farmers will be involved in this program.
 

Scalable farming advice

Farmers in Myanmar receive little to no help from third parties and are often left guessing about crucial influences on their crops. Satellite data can provide insights into important phenomena such as (extreme) weather, pest outbreaks, flooding and droughts on a local and large scale. By incorporating these data into our Golden Paddy platform we are able to provide farmers with actionable advice around timing of activities and inform them about changing conditions that affect their crops. Examples of advice are:

The recent rains increase risk of fungus, please check your field for pest X and call our local officer on 09XXXX for more information;

There is a big storm expected to hit your area in 2 days, please follow the guidelines below to protect your seedling from critical damage

Recent high temperatures might be affecting moisture levels of your soil, please irrigate x litres per acre and find some companies that provide irrigation services here.

As this advice is customized for every single farmer based on their crop, seed variety, location and planting date it is significantly more useful than general GAP based information. Golden Paddy provides this advice in an easy to understand format and formulation and provides additional information and connection with other market players to make it actionable. The advice is generated by a system that can easily be scaled to hundreds of thousands of farmers and several crops.
 

Financial inclusion

When speaking to farmers in the field, invariably the first problem on their mind is the lack of access to credit to finance their inputs, labour and machine hire. The SAM program aims to bring together smallholders and financial institutions to improve this situation. To tackle the key challenges of (micro-)finance institutions Golden Paddy supports these parties with market insights, loan origination information and connection (including lead generation and communication) with difficult to reach and assess smallholders. We also provide workflow and risk management tools to support further efficiency (= lower cost) of field operations. Our partner financial institutions provide customized and lower interest rate products that significantly reduce the financing pressure on farmers, enabling them to focus on production itself.

Learn more about this project? Get in touch with us at impact@impactterra.com