Olam widens coverage of farmer information system

OLAM trading company, has registered more than 14,000 smallholder farmers onto its ‘one stop’ technical platform to help the farmers improve yields, income and financial management.

The Olam Farmer Information System (OFIS) is a revolutionary technology which enables mapping and survey of farms, using an Android app to harness data for the benefit of smallholder farmers and cooperatives.

The platform collects data at the farm-gate, such as the age of trees, farm infrastructure and weather patterns for analysis which informs ongoing sustainability initiatives, such as good agricultural practice (GAP) and training delivered regularly to farmers.

“GAP empowers farmers to optimise their crop-per-plot yield and by inputting outcomes into OFIS, progress on farms can be tracked over time and training adapted where necessary. This system ensures the efficient use of resources and helps to increase farmers’ yields and incomes,” a statement issued by Olam said.

Coverage

It said OFIS had gone one step further in Ghana by providing 332 smallholder farmers with personalised farm management plans, and added that advice, such as when and how to prune trees or which fertiliser to apply, “is tailored to the individual farm and crop and can be sent by a text message straight to the farmer’s mobile phone.”

The statement said OFIS was already building capacity from the ground up and allowing farmer groups and cooperatives in Sefwi-Asawinso and Sefwi Wiawso to manage their stock levels and keep an eye on creditor and debtor positions, add that “It provides detailed reports about their business activities.”

The Country Head of Olam Ghana, Mr Amit Agrawal, was quoted as saying that “while big data usage is commonplace among large-scale farms, the OFIS provides the benefits of ‘big data’ to Ghanaian smallholder farmers and cooperatives.”

Mr Agrawal said the technology did not only support farmers to increase yields and mitigate the impact of erratic climatic conditions, but it allowed farmer groups greater commercial management control.

“The OFIS technology has already been able to survey and record, on the spot, thousands of farms and we are excited to expand this further across the country for the benefit of more farmers and communities.”

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Livelihood charter

According to Olam, the system’s extended coverage in Ghana was a significant boost to the Olam Livelihood Charter (OLC), the global initiative which aims to bring prosperity to farming and rural communities by supporting them in various ways, including through providing finance for crop production, investing in training to help improve yields and running rural health programmes.

In Ghana, the OLC covers and supports a total of 31,722 Ghanaian farmers in the cocoa and cashew sectors.