 Hello, everybody, and welcome to our seventh AgriTech Talk, an initiative of the Regional Office of Europe and Central Asia, designed to inspire us all to think tech when designing and implementing our projects and programs in less than 30 minutes a month. My name is Daniela DiGiolantonio, and I am the team leader for digital agriculture at the FAO Regional Office and today's host. Today's special guest is Leone Maliochetti-Lombi, agricultural officer with the Plant Production and Protection Division of FAO. Welcome, Leone. Hi, Daniela. Welcome, everyone. I'm very pleased to be here with you today. Likewise, we are very pleased to have you. And Leone, we invited you to tell us how we can harness technology to help small-scale farmers make smart decisions. So as usual, I have a few questions for you to get started and then we will turn out to the audience. So dear colleagues, you can start writing down your questions and comments in the chat or raise your hand if you want to ask Leone anything. My co-host is Vanita Morison, a digital agriculture analyst, and she will be helping me with questions in the chat later. So, Leone, question number one. You are the lead technical officer of a project called Smart Farming for the Future Generations, which is implemented in one country in our region in Uzbekistan. So can you tell us more about it? Yes, of course. Thank you, Daniela. And once again, good morning or good afternoon to everyone listening to this tech talk. So the Smart Farming for Future Generations is a project funded by the Republic of Korea and it supports the value chain of nutrition vegetables and in particular it focuses on protected cultivation systems managed by small holders in Uzbekistan and also in Vietnam. But it also focuses on local storing and grading actors and also on local market actors because as we said, the project is focusing on the whole value chain. Now, if we zoom into the bit of the support to small holders, the project is supporting the production part through qualified proximity technical support. In Uzbekistan, we have about 60 small holders beneficiaries of the project, each one of them with a green house and they are visited regularly, physically in presence by a qualified technical expert every week at least and they get advises and training on farm training about how to put in place good agricultural practices for a sustainable intensification of the production. And they also are supported through the introduction of modern techniques and technology. Let me just mention a few of these like, for example, modern covering materials like the insect proof net or the which allows a reduction in the use of pesticides for some I guess some pests and diseases but also efficient irrigation technology to reduce the use of water, a smarter way of using fertilizers to reduce the consumption, the use of fertilizers and thus reducing potential pollution and so forth. But I would like also to mention the introduction of pollinator insect and there are so many of this. We also introduced some digital systems to support decision making at farm level and we wanted to test if... So usually these systems are very expensive. I'm talking about internet of things systems. Systems, for example, to inform the smallholder producer about soil humidity or the temperature inside the greenhouses. However, these systems as I said are usually very expensive and their rate of adoption among smallholders is very limited. What we wanted to test was if it was possible to rather base our systems on open source technology which have a big promise which is to be very low cost and but we wanted to check against its accuracy and the durability and longevity through the time because of course if we want smallholders to receive reliable decision support the system has to be proof as a reliable one. So this is what we did. We chose four basic sensors. One about soil moisture, another one to measure air temperature and relative humidity inside the greenhouses and also another one about light intensity because these four basic elements are then determined to take some crucial decision during farming. Let's think about for example when it is the correct time the most efficient moment for pollination which is a very labor intensive activity or for example when to perfectly irrigate or when it is time to actually open or close the windows inside the greenhouses. These are activities that are normally practiced somehow based on the sensation or on physical presence of the farmer inside the greenhouse and this would require therefore more time and presence of the farmer inside the greenhouses. So thanks to these systems we are trying to increase the efficiency and the optimization of the production of vegetables in Uzbekistan. Thanks a lot Leonid, this is so fascinating. So you are telling us smart farming is a combination on non-digital and digital improvements and that you're bringing basically precision agriculture to small holders. But wait you also told us that this is usually very expensive and you are using open source internet of things. So now in very simple words please explain to all of us what is open source, what is internet of things and how we can harness these technologies for the benefit of small holders. Yes, all right. I think that as we say one concrete example is worth a thousand words. Let me show you something. This is a sensor, I hope you can see it. It is a very simple sensor but it gives three key indicators. It provides soil temperature, soil humidity, I mean the moisture level and also soil electric conductivity which is a very interesting indirect indicator for soil fertility, especially if the farmer is using soluble fertilizers during his cropping activities. So this sensor is already waterproof. It can work very well both in water in case we are using nutrient solution or in the soil it can be buried. There will be no issues and the cost of this sensor is about $60 available in the retail market. But this is just a sensor, right? Like it has cables. You see who is receiving the signal, how can we hit it? Well, the open source has, I mean based on the open source there are numbers of these options. This is a microcontroller. It has dual core computing capacity. And it has also internet connectivity, Wi-Fi and also Bluetooth connectivity. And it can be connected to the sensor. It can read the signals, interpret it and then send data over the internet. And you know that once we reach the internet we can do a lot of things. Like we could interact with numberless APIs from available online APIs but also there are APIs to make the information available for example through message services like for example WhatsApp, Telegram, Instagram, X, you name it. Of course, and then the cost of this controller is less than $5 on the online retail market. And provided that you work a little bit providing waterproof, let's say agricultural glade enclosure like this one for example, you would put together for about $100 a complete system that is able to send notifications and alerts to the farmer or at least to inform about what are the environmental conditions inside the greenhouse. So this is an example of something that can be developed through open source but what does it mean open source? Open source is a set. Actually it's a very large set. Libraries, thousands of libraries of projects of electronic components and software to have these electronic components work which are available online and anybody can for free access to this project modify to their fit, to fit their purpose and without sustaining an expense. So let's say that this way we are trading against proprietary solutions. We are trading the fact that we are not we are really reusing probably zeroing the cost for research and development. Of course what we are not getting is something like other services for example after sale support or I would say proper environmental grading support but as we said that there is always a trade-off. What is missing is just the capacity I would say to code to modify this software in a way that could fit the purpose but we will talk about this later in a minute. I just wanted to say that this is an example that I just showed you how we can connect the greenhouse to the internet. Let me pass this metaphor. But this is exactly the explanation of what it means internet of things because the internet of things is a modern concept that has developed during the last 10 years and it's basically a concept that describing the fact that nowadays not only laptop and computers or mobile phone can connect to the internet but any object let's think about AC air conditioning modules or washing machines. We have today a lot of objects that we were thinking that traditional we could not connect to it and now they are equipped with sensors and with the internet connectivity and they are now constituting a network of things that can even possibly talk to each other. The open source has of course boosted a lot the development of the internet of things network and as we just showed we can easily connect greenhouse or open fields or any other type of objects we wanted and what we wanted to test through the project was to see if we could somehow put together a system that could support agricultural production for small holders without breaking the budget. Wow, Leone. So you are making smart sensors for less than 100 dollars we're in the market we will need to pay one two thousand so or actually I should say we are making this because I think we need to reel the audience how we met I think it was exactly one year ago or so and I was just starting the implementation of DVI in Uzbekistan the Digital Villages Initiative and I was looking for a potential village site where to implement it so we went together to visit the sites of your project in Furgana Valley of Uzbekistan and we found two very good villages to work with and we decided to join forces to work as one file and really to design a program DVI intervention aimed to test this to make how can we make smart farming technologies affordable for small holders and how we can make how we can make this work both from a technology point of view as you said by using IoT and open source but also by leveraging the human capacities of Furgana Valley and more precisely the youth and finally how can we design a technology solution that will fit the specific context the needs the capacities of small holder farmers in Furgana so we joined forces we are currently implementing a DVI camp and the results we are obtaining are pretty exciting so can you tell us about it yes exactly exactly as I mentioned earlier the hardware is not enough we need a software and for as much as software is available online we still need somebody or we still need the capacities to to read it and to modify to fit the purpose now we are not expecting that today farmers start coding of course but we think that and actually this is a fact that open source can trigger new business models which are basically which are locally based not globally based and are locally based where we prime capacities a local level to interact and support and provide a technical support to small holders and what is needed is a basic training and the DVI camp are doing exactly this because 25 youth are currently being primed to basics of machine computer sciences and coding to learn coding using open source platforms and they have so far already reached a very decent level covering the basics and they are already right now testing their first prototypes in the field they are in contact with farmers and they are troubleshooting and running their first trials this is extremely interesting I know that there would be a lot to learn for them yet but at the same time we the project the two projects together are initiating something new we are putting together youth I would say vocational training and also farmers teaming up to solve one of the most ancient problem of probability of humanity which is how can we produce nutritious vegetables in a more optimized way thanks a lot Leone so we are getting towards the end and I already saw a lot of questions in the chat so let me remind colleagues to put their questions in the chat or to start raising their hands so just a very final question for you indeed we have been piloting for a few months now together in Uzbekistan you are also testing this in Vietnam so what are the lessons learned so far okay of course I'll try to be very brief where I would like to to separate between two different aspects one is would this device this would the technology be worth is the technology worth it and the answer is provided that in the open source electronic market there are a lot of different sensors some of them are of a very poor quality and others are of a very high quality so of course being able to differentiate and pick the good sensors and provided that we are building agricultural grid casings and and I would say professional level of software all in all all in all the technology seems to be very good at least more than enough for what we need in a greenhouse we don't need two decimal points after the point to decide if we need to open a window or not an accuracy of one degree Celsius is more than enough and actually we have a 0.10 degree of precision so this is more than enough and it is also durable it lasts a long time so we got the answer that point has been checked now in terms of adoption from the farmers this is a totally different story and it deals not just to these systems it can be open source or not open source it deals with farmers approach farmers level of education also the level of precision they use to to push their boundaries to towers optimization so we would say that probably to be effective this technology especially for new takers it has to be accompanied by adequate training on optimized agricultural practices in general not just because of the digital tool the digital tool can be very useful once those concepts are already in place probably if we had to compare between Vietnam and its Pakistan probably what is what we realize is a problem in Vietnam in Vietnam smallholder farmers were more keen about using this technology but because they are 100% of their time commercial farmers and they where they are already familiar with concept of optimization and while in Uzbekistan most of our beneficiaries are not only vegetable growers in the greenhouses they are also livestock herders they are also doing they are proper livelihood I would say so this being the greenhouse production not their first fourth of the day we felt like they were less keen about consulting the tool to take agricultural decisions however we also realized that there is also of course there are realities which are really I would say really peculiar to the context in Uzbekistan we realized that for example smallholders are very familiar with the use of the telegram messaging application for those who don't know telegram is something very similar to messages it's just a software for for exchanging messages now what is possible is to what we realized that probably if we were having this board talking to the internet interacting with the telegram bot the farmer would receive on his mobile phone the information about his greenhouses in the form of short messages but this could be Twitter it could be any other software and this is actually what the youth at the Divi ICAMP now is doing is re-formulate let's say reformulate repurpose the project to work through telegram messages so basically the farmer will receive alerts and information about the greenhouses directly in the form of messages and it seems that this it seems that this this user interface would be more much more adapted to the to its back instant small holders exactly so while technology itself it's important technology design is also essential and all these other factors digital literacy general literacy attitude of the farmers needs to be factored in analyze the and go into the whole redesign process the solution has we have done in Uzbekistan through a redesign via telegram as you were saying so Leonid thanks a lot for the insights you shared with me so now I will turn to the audience for questions colleagues feel welcome to raise your hand or post your question in the chat and let me ask my co-host Vanina to help me pick a few questions that were posted in the chat thanks Daniela and thanks Leonid for a very insightful talk we actually have one question in the chat already and it's about whether in the absence of training what kind of support or assistance would farmers need and do you envisage this as a service to farmers and how would you charge them back all right so I thanks because this question this answering this question will give me the opportunity to stress once again the importance that the digital tools are like are what they are they will help only annoying more with more precision about the environmental conditions inside the greenhouses but that the plants are not growing by themselves they're not managed by the application so the first of all what what is the purpose for us is to have nutritious food grown in in a decent manner meaning decent jobs and and often sufficient quality for the consumers now this comes with a lot of work about horticultural operations good agricultural practices and so on however there are some tiresome operations and once again I would like to bring in pollination that if we don't have availability for access to pollinators and insects it's a matter of spending hours during the day about stroking plants to to increase the the setting of the flowers into fruits now this operation is effective only if it's done between 21 and 25 degrees Celsius and the humidity which is compressed between 60 and 80 percent of relative humidity if we're doing this any time of the day when I have time well I'm probably spending just a lot of time and work so this is why for example you see thanks to the open source we can design tools that are really fitting the purpose there are two small led LEDs here and one of them would turn on a green when the conditions are ideal for pollination activities so this is an example of how training and knowledge has of course to be shared upfront and the digital tool comes as it's like the speedometer of the car right we need to know how to drive the car but we need to know also how to respect limits and the speedometer will will tell us exactly when we are going over the speed limit and in terms of in terms of economics as we said open sources do work on a totally different business plan concept okay when we think about an economic activity we think about of course a business plan and the way it should work but open source works on another paradigm the open source works on the basis that we can solve local problem with the local solution with solutions that are coming globally so probably probably the only the probably I mean it's not me saying it it's the literature talking about this probably these type of solutions can stay cheap probably at one condition that local services are developed providing this type of technical support and service I'm talking about some sort of after sale or further development of the tool locally to local farmers only to only if this assistance is provided by local local people by local personnel and and I think this is the whole point and of course as long as farmers are feeling that this service is useful they will be probably they will be probably be happy to pay something back to those to that youth okay oh for whoever is providing this service and with I think that probably there will be some local ways of finding the right balance between demand and offer determining eventually the right price thank you Leoné for that and there's one more question that we will pose is can you tell us how does the project deal with issues of network connectivity in rural areas thanks this is perfect thank thanks all for this question this is a very good point so realize that this is really of this is of course a very relevant matter and we were I think lucky but this is not just being fact of being lucky so in both areas of the project there was a cellular data coverage okay 3G and 4G but this brings us on to another very important issue I want to bring the example of Vietnam in Vietnam data connectivity is very cheap and very widely available okay and of course this could be this of course is enabling the environment for the digitalization that this is a much broader concept in the case of Uzbekistan the connectivity is available probably it's less reliable and also but the thing is that the cost is much steeper than the one we realized in Vietnam just to give you an example in Vietnam 10 dollars would grant about six months of data exchange while in Uzbekistan probably we need 20 or 30 dollars per month and of course this is a huge limiting factor of course there are other technologies we don't necessarily need data there are other ways of communication like low bandwidth radio signals there might be there are there are other ways to to develop these systems and once again what is interesting is that open source really provides us with all different solutions based on the problem in this case anyway we decided to go ahead with data with the cellular data exchange and and the Wi-Fi hotspot to have the devices connected thanks a lot Leonid so yes capacities connectivity financial viability and overall sustainability I'm seeing also more and more questions in the chat very interesting conversation really it was great to have you today to learn about smart farming dear colleagues thanks a lot for joining us today time is over but actually I have seen lots of interactions in the chat so let me invite you to keep discussing this