News

Successes of the CROPMON project shared with a Closure Workshop

31 Oct

20th August 2019 – Nairobi, Kenya

Today, CROPMON partners are celebrating the end of the Crop Monitoring Service-Kenya project with a closure workshop in Safari Park Hotel in Nairobi, Kenya. During the workshop we will present the project results and discuss how commercial and strategic partners like platforms, cooperatives and agricultural suppliers can start benefiting from the CROPMON service.

Practical and specific information for about 200,000 farmers

After 4 years of hard work, the CROPMON project has come to an end. Throughout the past 4 years, CROPMON has reached close to 200,000 Kenyan farmers and established a network of extension officers. The farmers were provided with practical, hands-on and specific information about their crop condition, farm management advice, and a local 7-day forecast of temperatures and rainfall via an SMS service. The data gathered via the CROPMON service give very specific insights and tracking and tracing opportunities for commercial and strategic partners. The collected farm data include phone number, plot perimeter/farm location, crop type and variety, planned management practices, real time monitoring of crop growth and weather events, etc. The total area of agricultural land being monitored using the CROPMON service is estimated at 117,000 hectares.

Celebrating the success and discussing commercial opportunities

During the closure meeting we will celebrate the success of the project together with the partnering organizations (AgroCares, NEO, Weather Impact, Cereal Growers Association, Coffee Management Services, Equity Group Foundation, Sugar Research Institute) and other stakeholders including representatives of 2Scale/IFDC, ACRE, AgFin, BonRezo, Cellulant, Eprod, JBQ Africa, KALRO, Mercy Corps, Microsoft, Netherlands Space Office, Precision Ag, Pula, Seed Co, SNV, SWC and WeFarm.

“The closing workshop is the perfect opportunity for us to present to the outside world our achievements and the lessons learned from the project. We will also share the experiences of farmers and demonstrate the CROPMON app and portal. We furthermore will discuss the opportunities of the CROPMON service for commercial partners after the end of the project.”

David Marcelis
CROPMON Project Coordinator

The next phase

Following the project closure on 1st September, a transition period of a few months will commence in which the service is continued with internal and external funding. This time will be used to further develop strategic business agreements with partners and external stakeholders to come to a financially sustainable earning model and business case.

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More about CROPMON

Crop Monitoring Service-Kenya (CROPMON) is a four-year project funded by the Geodata for Agriculture and Water (G4AW) facility. The CROPMON project has developed an affordable, very practical and specific decision supporting information service for smallholder to medium-sized farmers in Kenya. Today, about 200,000 farmers (growing coffee, sugarcane, maize, wheat and grass) in Kenya benefit on a weekly basis from the CROPMON service. The CROPMON service is a perfect content-based add-on service for platforms servicing farmers or content for tracking and tracing systems for management of cooperatives and food industry.