The current excessive application of agro-inputs that costs sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over US $90 billion in health due to human over-exposure and more than US $35 billion on food importation to mitigate threats of food security on the continent.
The FiKapSy – short for ‘Flying Knapsack System” is a drone system: a spray boom with rotors for crop dusting precision dispersal of agro-inputs.
The solution aims to reduce the degradation of the environment and the over-exposure of (mostly) farmers to the harmful synthetic compounds that cause occupational poisoning currently affecting more than 1.1 million practitioners in developing countries like Nigeria.
The solution is developed by AMIntegrated Aerial, that builds drones for the task of crop dusting open field farms in rural Africa. For the first time ever while conducting drudgery service of crop dusting, mechanization in rural farms can offer these farmers aerial views of their farms along with other vital information.
Such information may include the size of a farm; condition of crops; surrounding threats. It gives farmers inexpensive insight into expansion potentials beyond their recurrently cultivated areas for some, in over 20 years. Money can then be confidently spent to clear and cultivate farther reaching ends of their lands with informed decisions.
Introduction of this inexpensive drone innovative mechanization displaces today’s dependency on the failed use of heavy duty, expensive farm tractors for the purpose of agro-input dispersal in developing economies like Nigeria.
: The solution can help increase utilization of the 874 million hectares of arable land available on the continent from a mere 32% to over 60% in 3 years while reducing soil degradation from the chemical over-application per hectare by 30%.
The solution can help not just African states but countries in other emerging economies looking to tackle food insecurity, chemical proliferation or simply increasing crop yield by providing a more targeted application process of agro-inputs.
Nigeria
