Keeling Curve

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Project Summary / Description:

My personal experience motivated me; I grew up on the slopes of the Aberdare mountains farming with my dad and every farming season, 1/3 of our crops were destroyed by delayed identification of crop pests and diseases while poor rainfall due to the adverse effects of climate change made the situation worse. On doing my research, I was driven to solve the following:

(1)GHG emissions from agriculture account for 9.8billion tonnes of carbon annually
(2)Delayed identification of crop pests and diseases which destroyed 47% of crops

Studying Computer Science and meeting an able team we founded Farmer Lifeline in 2020 where we developed a proprietary solar-powered device mounted permanently on the farm that alerts farmers in time using SMS every time a pest or disease is identified and recommends affordable, health-friendly farm chemicals with minimal carbon emissions to apply as a solution to the infestation detected.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmCL0RRhXO4

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How Project Affects Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions:

Replaces/avoids GHGs (e.g., projects that replace sources of GHGs, such as the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heat, transport, or other energy uses), Reduces GHGs (e.g., projects that reduce sources of GHGs, such as through efficiency or other changes in consumption)

Best Estimate of GHG Avoidance/Reduction of This Project (Tonnes CO2 Equivalent/Year):

Impact on Underrepresented Groups:

1)We make smallholder farmers adaptive and resilient to climate change through changing the farming practices (behavioral change). We do this by not only ensuring farmers only use farm chemicals and fertilizers that are carbon-negative and with minimal greenhouse gas emissions but also farm chemicals and fertilizers that reduce soil degradation and enhance soil as a carbon-sink. Organic fertilizers and farm chemicals recommended by our devices to the farmers using our devices, as a solution to the crop pests/diseases detected, have reduced greenhouse gas emissions that would have been released to the atmosphere by the soils by over 19.283 tonnes in 2022 only thus driving SDG13 Climate Action. We have a live data analytics dashboard that we track this impact: http://datadashboard.appcodetechnologies.com/.

2)Data has shown that our devices reduce farm losses for smallholder farmers by 40% and increase their farm incomes by 30% in every planting season as shown in this recommendation letter from FarmLink International, a Canadian NGO working with farmers in Kiambu county currently using our devices: (drive.google.com/file/d/1hlUzliQ19Q36uRwDalYLNscK-yBBgqq2/view?usp=sharing). Increased farm yields results in increased ability to meet basic needs, and improved standards of living for women, African farmers and vulnerable smallholder farmers thus propelling farmers towards SDG1 of No Poverty and SDG2 of Zero Hunger. For this we received a presidential honor from the President H.E Paul Kagame: https://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/79419-paul-kagame-honours-innovative-kenyan-ceo and the COMESA Innovation Award, for being the most impactful idea in the COMESA-18 countries: www.comesa.int/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/e-COMESA-Newsletter-Issue-No.-673.pdf

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Mission Statement:

Farmer Lifeline is a startup that exists to get farmers ahead of crop pests and diseases and help farmers adapt to climate change through behavior change using a solar-powered device. Our devices are currently being used by 1535 farmers in Kenya(Nyandarua and Kiambu). The two regions provided sufficient farms to pilot the project as well as interact with farmers in their daily activities before introducing the innovation. We are currently working on scaling business operations across 25 counties in Kenya and impact more farmers both locally and internationally with timely alerts and behavior change in order to adapt to the change in the climate. We have developed our second version of the device with a camera-radius of 600 meters in 2021 and currently working on Version-03 device. We have 3 major partnerships giving use access to over 150,000 smallholder farmers namely: Farmshare, KALRO and FarmLink International.