August 22, 2005
Cellphone weather data could aid farmers
Business Day South Africa reports on how cellphones telling farmers when to irrigate their crops could help them boost production and save water, sugar growers say.
"Small-scale black farmers around Pongola, a few kilometres south of SA's border with Swaziland, receive one text message a week telling them whether they should irrigate their sugar crops that week.
Over-irrigating sugar crops can reduce the yield, as well as wasting water — a fragile resource in southern Africa, where aid workers say drought has left more than 10 million people facing food shortages this year."
The pilot project has been set up by the SA Suger Association, an umbrella group covering both small and large commercial growers as well as millers.
Rainfall data from an existing weather station in Pongola is sent to a powerful computer system at SASA's Mount Edgecombe headquarters outside Durban, which models how much more water the crops need. A simple automatic text message is then sent out in Zulu telling farmers whether to irrigate or not."
Picture from Faces of Hope by Alison Wright
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