Agriculture: Why we’re adopting technology to boost productivity, minimise risk – NIRSAL
In a bid to bid to boost agricultural productivity and minimize risk in mechanized farming, the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) says it is deploying technology to ensure efficiency.
Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that agriculture accounts for an average of 24 per cent of the continent’s GDP, but remains untapped as a lot of agricultural potentials that can be leveraged on by increasing farming productivity.
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To this end, technology called “Microsoft Azure Farmbeats” is believed to have the potential of enhancing productivity in farming, as well as reduce the risk involved.
NIRSAL, however, noted that it has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft to collaborate in the deployment of the Microsoft Azure FarmBeats platform to help Nigerian farmers become more productive, reduce costs, practice sustainable agriculture and achieve better agricultural outcomes.
The US$500 million non-bank financial institutions, wholly-owned by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), was established in 2013 to stimulate the flow of affordable finance and investments into the country’s agricultural sector by de-risking the agribusiness finance value chain, fixing agricultural value chains, building long- term capacity, and institutionalising incentives for agricultural lending through its five strategic pillars, namely: Risk Sharing, Insurance, Technical Assistance, incentives and Rating.
By organising 4 million hectares (owned by 8 million farmers) into 16,000 NIRSAL AgroGeoCoops® of 250 hectares each, NIRSAL aims to remove barriers to better financing for farmers.
According to NIRSAL, “Microsofts Azure FarmBeats is a purpose-built, agricultural cloud platform that enables the aggregation of agricultural data and generation of actionable insights into farm health and conditions, soil moisture, crop layout and farm population by harnessing the power of Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and Cloud technology,”
Speaking on the collaboration, Aliyu Abdulhameed, NIRSAL’s Managing Director/CEO maintained that Agriculture remains the bedrock of the country’s economy, which is why it’s sustainability and growth is crucial for the development of the country and its people.
“We are certain that Azure FarmBeats will be the tool that will help us to analyse the data being produced from these farms and all the possible ways we can use it to stabilise the agricultural value chain and boost the confidence of investors to eliminate barriers to the free flow of finance and investment to agribusiness in Nigeria.”
