Kenya: Helping farmers at the touch of a button

NAIROBI: The ability to correctly diagnose and treat crop diseases such as banana wilt via mobile phone is just one of endless possibilities for smallholder farmers if location-specific (geospatial) information were available, according to researchers.

Such a project would, for example, make use of mobile devices equipped with global positioning systems and cameras.

"A trained community worker can input the location co-ordinates, take a photo of the diseased crop, send it to our database, from which we would forward the image for expert review and feedback," Whitney Gantt, a project officer with the Grameen Foundation, told IRIN. "In addition to being able to identify a disease, people will know what to do."

Read the full article on IRIN.