Farmer Centered Large Scale e-Surveillance and Control of Crop Pests in Kenya

Abstract

With advancement of mobile technology and the property of mobile phones of being ubiquitous and pervasive, innovative applications in agriculture that are context specific and individualized to farmers’ needs can now be developed. This is because mobile phone based agricultural innovations are readily leveraged to provide farmers with information ranging from farm preparation and pre-harvest to post harvest and farm produce marketing. In this regard, this paper proposes a farmer centric pest e-surveillance solution framework, a digital platform that uses mobile devices, image processing and crowdsourcing to assist smallholder farmers in low income countries to effectively identify and control crop pest invasion, and to connect them with local agro-vet stores and extension service providers for assistance. This way, we can assist small holder farmers in rural Africa to learn about crop pests, to detect and respond to pest invasion, and to control the effects of such pest invasion by providing timely, accurate, relevant and readily consumable information in the local languages of the farmers. This also makes it easy to perform large-scale pest surveillance in the rural farming community.