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Rabat – With Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology becoming a promising tool to improve the overall production and quality of the agricultural sector, OCP Group’s Agritech business unit AgriEdge is pursuing its commitment to develop Moroccan and African agriculture.
AgriEdge was created by OCP, a world-leading fertilizer company and the world’s largest phosphate mining company, and incubated within Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (UM6P) since 2017. It focuses on improving the agricultural sector across Africa to make it more resilient, sustainable, and profitable.
With an objective of “transforming big data into a nutrient,” AgriEdge relies on precision agriculture services to offer to farmers needed recommendations allowing them to improve yields and reduce costs.
Satellite-based model for a sustainable agriculture
AgriEdge relies on the expertise of UM6P’s researchers and the quality of its first-class labs, to develop agritech services that address the needs of African farmers.
Morocco World News spoke to Faissal Sehbaoui, Managing Director of AgriEdge, who pointed out that the business unit’s services are powered by agricultural data with the use of hybrid models that combine agronomic knowledge and AI know-how to sustainably maximize the overall performance of farmers production systems.
AgriEdge services include precision irrigation, which uses satellite images and sensors to rationalize the use of water resources, the rational use of fertilizers, a practice that focuses on three main macronutrients: Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K).
Sehbaoui explained that AgriEdge has developed a platform that offers the possibility to “predict the yield of certain crops before harvest in order to better prepare the supply chain post-harvest activities that follow after.”
The satellite-based models have already positively impacted farmers’ production, the results obtained differ depending on each service. In particular, explained the managing director, precision irrigation reduced the amount of water used for the same field by 25%.
“When we talk about a 25% decrease of water, it means that we are also saving 25% of energy,” he added, emphasizing that the drought situation in Morocco began to have an immaterial cost much greater that the material cost.
Sehbaoui also spoke of the digital nitrogen index, also known as N-Index, a tool to boost the production of wheat in Morocco. N-Index is the outcome of three years of applied research. The digital technology can estimate, through satellite images, the optimal amount of nitrogen to be applied for wheat at its different growth stages. “N-IndeX” allows 21% nitrogen savings while achieving 24% additional grain yield. This double gain allows the farmer to significantly improve his income.
“There are currently 24,000 farmers who benefit from our services. Most of them are based in Morocco, Mali, Senegal, Benin, and Togo and cover approximately 300,000 hectares,” Sehbaoui noted.
Implementing AI in agriculture
AI uses sensors, cameras or drones to help farmers optimize and simplify agricultural interventions through remote control or monitoring, allowing them to respond to the major challenges, which are to have a sustainable and connected agriculture, meet the new expectations of consumers, and be able to produce more with the least possible resources.
AI could streamline sustainable agriculture in Morocco and across the African continent and boost the production value chain. However, its implementation faces several challenges.
As the agritech sector in Morocco – and Africa – is still at its early stages, farmers, especially smallholders, are still not ready to invest in digital solutions. In this sense, Sehbaoui stressed that technical and cultural challenges remain the main issues facing the implementation of AI in agriculture. Still, he underlined, it has been easier for OCP to convince large farmers than small ones.
“Large farmers are market-oriented, when they see how our technologies have a positive impact in their production, they quickly adopt our solutions,” he added.
The real challenge, however, remains small farmers with a limited budget as the majority of smallholders, whose production mainly intends to satisfy their own needs with a little presence in the market, cannot afford to implement of most digital technologies. Nevertheless, agritech smartphone based technologies are becoming more and more popular in acceding to market and finance services.
As AgriEdge aims to further boost digitization and precision agriculture technologies in Africa, Sehbaoui stressed that AgriEdge offers AI solutions for free to smallholder farmers.
“Our objective is to move towards an agriculture that integrates digital solutions. These solutions should not be exclusive only for large farmers, but for everyone,” he added.
To overcome the cultural challenges facing such an endeavor, the AgriEdge managing Director said that the AgriEdge business unit is diversifying its communication tools to integrate as many farmers as possible. He highlighted, “Instead of communicating through digital platforms, other formats such as SMS and audio messages are used to share farming recommendations.”
‘Agritech caravan’ was also among the initiatives initiated by AgriEdge to introduce AI-based solutions to farmers and how this can boost their agricultural productivity.
“Agritech solutions cannot work properly in Africa unless they have been developed in Africa and adapted to African farmers needs,” Sehbaoui said.
AI in improving the agricultural ecosystems
The Moroccan agricultural sector is facing emerging challenges. The country’s rainfalls have hit a low record this year, driving the sector to suffer from the worst drought recorded in over 40 years.
Water resources are also becoming increasingly limited because of climate change. While water scarcity, shrinking land size, and climate hazards are more worrying than ever for all African countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation.
Sehbaoui underlined that AI could be a promising solution to tackle the loss of soil fertility since the collected data allow a faster detection of the problems and hence a faster response to restore the situation.
“Beyond our digital services to boost agricultural production, we try to create a dynamic agritech ecosystem, so that we can contribute efficiently in the improvement of agricultural production systems,” he stressed.
There are many initiatives aiming at developing the agricultural ecosystem such as the “Filaha innovation program,” which focuses on supporting young entrepreneurs to transform their agritech ideas into startups that provide services well adapted to local needs.
Regarding the “Agri Analytics Days” initiative, Sehbaoui stressed they the process of preparing the third edition is under way, with the participation of national and international experts in agritech alongside African farmers to discuss advances and benefits of precision agriculture.
Despite the African continent still not being widely exposed to digitization, the current AgriEdge project implemented by Morocco’s OCP Group explores the promising potential of technology, particularly in agriculture, to optimize supply chains and ensure food and water security.
