With Kenyan food prices climbing and shortages mounting following an agricultural season marred by crop losses to weather, Farmer service FarmBizAfrica has yesterday launched the most complete AI-driven tool to help farmers double their incomes and slash weather risk in the current planting season.
The patchy short rains were so varied by region, last year, that farmers planting maize at the Coast never got to harvest, while, upcountry, farmers were losing tomatoes, beans and avocados to water logging.
“With nearly all our crops remaining rain fed, just planting the same crops whatever the weather is wrecking farmers’ incomes and driving up everybody’s food prices,” said Antynet Ford of FarmBizAfrica.
Instead, HarvestMAX is now delivering farm plans for the long-season weather with bounty crops for the farmer’s location and soil type for free – as well as the inputs needed, whole-season agronomist guidance, and additional crop management support for Sh500.
“FarmBizAfrica reaches over 3m farmers a month, but 55 per cent of our readers, subscribers and followers are in Kenya, making it obvious to launch HarvestMAX here in Kenya first,” said FarmBizAfrica’s CEO Jethro Tieman.
The tool, which calculates the likely earnings, input costs, and profits for every recommended crop, creates a permanent account for each farmer to consult as many times as they like.
It requires no app download, gives week-by-week steps to get the best yields, and can also be printed out as a full guide to top-performing crops.“We know that farmers can earn even five times more from their plots with better crop choices,” said Antynet. “Many earn as low as Sh50,000 in a season from an acre, where there are options that can get them over Sh250,000 or even Sh500,000 with help on the best crop choices and extension on how to succeed.”
HarvestMAX is providing any farmer who opens an account with free long-season crop recommendations for their location and soil type.
It then gives a plan, for a one-off Sh500 admin fee, explaining the reasons for each crop recommendation, what to do if the rains are late (or early), the best seeds or root stocks, how to plant, manage and harvest, and harvesting strategies to get the best prices.
“FarmBizAfrica has worked with farmers for 15 years, training, recording, publishing, and what we have seen over and over is that farmers do so much better when they plant the right crop for the weather, get support in how to grow it successfully, and choose crops that sell easily and earn well,” said Jethro.
HarvestMAX is available countrywide on: HarvestMAX.farmbizapps.com
