Agricultural service provider Cropnuts launches cutting edge soil testing platform powered by AI

Date:09-20-2021

Kenya based Crop Nutrition Laboratory Services Ltd (Cropnuts), Africa’s leading independent laboratory for agricultural and environmental testing, has launched AgViza, a disruptive AI based soil testing and digital crop advisory service for smallholder farmers.

Soil testing services have been out of financial reach for smallholder farmers, which is reflected in the fact that poor soil fertility remains a key driver of yield loss in smallholder farms across Africa.

AgViza soil testing technology will change the status quo by empowering farmers with this critical soil management information.

The technology bundles soil testing, farmer training and specific agronomy advisory into an affordable digital service.

It is built on five years of research and development drawing on Cropnuts’ extensive soil knowledge, combined with decades of experience serving African farmers and an extensive Africa-wide geo-referenced soil sample database.

The platform’s bespoke artificial intelligence engine measures soil fertility properties, which allows it to deliver high-quality soil health management and fertilizer application advice to farmers via interactive SMS, backed up by trained local agronomists.

The combination of different technologies reduces the cost of soil testing by more than 75%, making it more affordable for all types of farmers, especially smallholder farmers in remote locations.

AgViza erases need for traditionally expensive and complex lab analysis

According to the DOB Equity and AHL Venture backed company, AgViza is a B2B service model that works through business partners such as fertilizer companies, produce aggregators, public sector extension, development organizations, digital market platforms and financial institutions and addresses key challenges within the smallholder agriculture sector.

Once the partner agronomists collect the soil samples from farmers’ fields, AgViza’s soil testing engine will measure and correlate the soil fertility properties in the soil, which overcomes the need to use traditionally expensive and complex lab analysis processes.

Traditionally, Cropnuts served large and medium farmers, but its development of the innovative, low-cost soil testing platform will allow it to serve millions of smallholder farmers in Africa.

This is critical to realising the potential of Africa’s smallholder farmers, improving their livelihoods while contributing to food security and economic growth.

Currently less than 0.5% of smallholder farmers have used soil testing, illustrating the massive potential impact of this technology.

Jeremy Cordingley, Managing Director at Cropnuts, says, “We are positioning AgViza to become a key driver of financial inclusion for smallholder farmers. Soil testing will help farmers know the right fertilizer requirements and, in turn, this de-risks lending to farmers.”

“The field specific input recommendations will improve farmer yields, leading to higher incomes and improved repayment ability, giving financial institutions better assurance on their farmer loans.

“It also gives farmers greater confidence to invest in their land when they know exactly what to do and see the impact first hand.”

As a result, smallholder farmers can sustainably maintain healthy soils and achieve long term productivity even when exposed to extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, which are being accelerated by climate change.

Saskia van der Mast, DOB Equity Co-CEO, says, “After years of development and capturing thousands of calibration soil samples, Cropnuts now has a scalable and digital solution to enable millions of farmers to become more productive and profitable.

“We believe Cropnuts has the potential to accelerate investment in the agricultural value chains, increase food security, as well as manage climate risk.”

Cropnuts’ cutting-edge technology makes it the frontrunner in the testing of soil fertility, water quality, food safety and fertilizer quality, to name a few.

With soil testing already incorporating organic soil carbon levels, the technology has an important role to play in combating climate change by measuring how adapting agricultural practices and inputs enhances soil health and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere.