Thursday, November 7, 2013

Agricultural Technology- Farm Defenders

 

Farm Defenders

 



     A 3D farm simulation game for the continent of Africa. The game is realistic to the agricultural conditions in Africa, like the soil type, weather, and natural challenges. It teaches its players to efficiently and effectively grow plants and become wealthy while also preventing various kinds of diseases and pests. The users of the game will also learn a variety of soils in Africa, enhance your soil productivity, grow the right crops at the right time, know various techniques to fight off pests and diseases, know when to harvest at the right time and have ideas regarding how to store and sell your crops. In addition, the game also provides its users the understanding as to how to form associations, cooperatives, and trading partners to further advance your agricultural business in your local area. Unfortunately, this simulation game is made for farming in Africa continent. Simulation program for other continents have not been made by the organization. People can send an email to the organization to create the same simulation game for their desired continents. 

 

 

 






 

 

 Link for more information

 


Agricultural Technology- Aqueduct

 

Aqueduct

 

 



     Aqueduct is an online database, created by the World Resources Institute, that lets its users to combine 12 important indicators of water risk to build global overall water risk maps. The 12 indicators are such as baseline water stress, inter-annual variability, seasonal variability, flood occurrence, drought severity, upstream storage, groundwater stress, return flow ratio, upstream protected land, media coverage, access to water, and threatened amphibians. It shows us areas that have water quality problems, gives us predictions for floods and droughts, supply-to-demand ratios, and many other details. Each location is given a certain risk score, and heat maps provided in the database points out which areas have the biggest problems. This database has been used by many companies, investors and even governments to make global policy decisions regarding water scarcity, particularly. 

 



The downside is that this database is based on the water scarcity data for the last three years, causing this database to provide results that are not fully precise or true. 

 


The advantage of this database is that it helps many people to predict and understand many areas with water scarcity and quality problems.

 

 

Link for more information 

Agricultural Technology- Digital Green

 

Digital Green

 

 


     Using low-cost pocket video cameras, Digital Green is a massive database full of instructional videos from across India, Ghana, and Ethiopia. It is currently working in around 1,500 villages with more than 125,000 farmers, roughly 70 percent of whom are female. It helps its users by sharing agricultural knowledge and supporting and encouraging use of new techniques. Each video is 8 to 10 minutes long, made by a farmer addressing various agricultural questions. 

 



Pros: It allows the illiterate populations, which is more than 40 percent in India, 30 percent in Ghana, and 60 percent in Ethiopia, to learn and get benefit from the videos. 

 



Cons: This is a very labor-intensive process, involving farmers from many countries. 

 

 

Link for more information 

Agricultural Technology- Grameen Foundation's CKW Program

 

Grameen Foundation's CKW Program

 






     Grameen Foundation team up with Palantir Technologies to revolutionize Uganda’s approach to farming. Grameen Foundation provided 28,000 geocoded soil samples from all over Uganda, and Palantir Technologies used it to create an exhaustive soil map of Uganda. The map includes pH levels on areas in the country, where to optimally plant prominent crops (maize, coffee, bananas, and soybeans), and areas which are vulnerable to maggots and other types of pests. 

 



Pros: The map is very comprehensive with regards to planting those prominent crops in Uganda. It tells its users exactly where the best to grow those crops in the country is. 

 



Cons: Unfortunately, the map has just covered those top crops. Therefore, the similar data for other crops still needs to be produced for other farmers who plant other crops. 

 

 

Link for more information 

Agricultural Technology- Web Soil Survey

 

Web Soil Survey (WSS)

 

 


     WSS is enormously helpful for people, especially farmers, by providing access to soil data and other related information generated by the National Cooperative Soil Survey. This great website is operated by the USDA Service (NRCS). In addition to providing soil data, it also gives users access to the largest natural resource information system in the world. One of the benefits from this powerful website is that users can utilize the soil data information to check the suitability of the soils of an area for a particular use. The soil maps and data are available online for almost 100 percent of the nation’s counties. 

 

 

Pros: Users can check if the soil of an area is suitable for a particular purpose or not. 

 

 

Cons: Because of the various and enormous data presented in the website, there is a lot of requirements for your computer to be able to open up and utilize the website. See all the requirements

 

 

Link for more details