Improving Profitability for Smallholder Farmers in Nigeria Using Farm Robotics

By Nigeria Flying Labs

Background 

Crop production by smallholder farmers in Nigeria is being heavily impacted by increasing and fluctuating costs due to inflation, removal of subsidy on petrol, external shocks from the Ukraine-Russia war and fluctuations in the exchange rate. These prices have increased significantly in the past two years, with the average smallholder farmer bearing the high costs in addition to low yield and income. Some of these cost components also have environmental and human health ramifications. Two of these are herbicide application (inputs) and weeding (labour). The excessive use of chemical-based systemic and contact herbicides have adverse effects on the soil and on human health. As weeding is a major component of the labour requirement (hence, cost) of smallholder farmers in Nigeria, finding a cost-efficient solution becomes necessary.

Solution

Nigeria Flying Labs, in partnership with agritech company AgroXchange, seeks to improve the profitability of crop farming for smallholder farmers through automated weeding machines that can be adapted to the Nigerian crop production landscape. AgroXchange is a Nigerian-based digital technology company that uses satellite data to provide crop health information and monitoring to provide early warning for farmers. The automated weeding machines would thus eliminate the need for herbicide application and reduce the cost of labour for weeding by up to 75%. 

Details

The proposed solution is a solar-powered autonomous weed removal machine that requires minimal human interaction. The weeding machine will be tailored to the Nigerian crop production situation in terms of terrain and crop planting structure. From this... ...to this... = this.

Objectives

1. Design and develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of the solar-powered autonomous weed removal machine.
2. Test the MVP on a pilot scale at pre-emergence and growth stages.
3. Assess the cost impact on the economics of production.
4. Optimise the design for production cost savings.

Benefits

1. Reduced cost and time required for weeding and weed control.
2. Minimal human interaction and reduced fatigue.
3. A greener environment due to use of solar power and batteries, avoiding carbon emissions from petrol-powered engines in other similar weed removal machines.
4. Ease of weed control all-year as the machine can be deployed as often as possible, even during the wet season.
5. Reduction of the potentially harmful effects of commonly used Glyphosate-based herbicides on farms.

Limitations of Existing Solutions

  Well laid out farms

1.  Existing solutions are not tailored to the Nigerian crop production environment. They are produced for well laid out farms. Most farms in Nigeria are not well laid out or structured in rows (except in the case of oil palm and other perennial crops).
2. High cost of scaling due to the dollar/Naira exchange rate fluctuations. This implies that our proposed solution has to be assembled and produced in Nigeria to achieve scale and uptake.

Development process

Short-term Design and development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) of the weed removal machine with basic features that include: 

1. Weed removal ploughs to remove weeds from the roots
2. Wheels that can adapt to different terrain without compromising the blade
3. Camera to send video feed to a controller
4. Development of controller
5. Integration of solar power modules

Mid to long-term

1. Advanced weed removal ploughs
2. Advanced AI enabled camera that recognises weed, maps the layout of the land, and is able to differentiate weed from crop
3. Laser weed removal
4. Wheels that can adapt to terrain based on map generated by the AI-enabled camera
5. Integration of satellite-based positioning
6. Improvement on controller and user interfaces
7. Optimisation of power management and solar power modules

Cost Assessment

This is examined from the Good Agronomy Practice (GAP) point of view. Cassava GAP An example is taken of cassava. The circled processes represent the points of application of the solar-powered autonomous weeding machine. With traditional weeding and herbicide application techniques, the average cost per hectare for the three processes is about $90–$100, including the cost of pre-emergence and post-emergence herbicide application. The average overall cost for cassava production per hectare is about $500. The solar-powered weed removal machine potentially will eliminate about 20% of the total average cost of production. This allows the farmer to record up to 20% in cost savings and a corresponding higher profit margin from a higher yield. While the cost of the herbicides may be removed from the Economics of Production (EOP), the cost of manual labour for weeding will be significantly reduced.

Impact

• Smallholder farmers: Smallholder farmer groups form an integral proportion of the target market. Through these  groups, small-scale producers can take advantage of economies of scale to use the leased machine at a relatively low per hectare cost.
• Medium to large scale farms: Medium to large-scale farms with farmlands of over hundreds to thousands of hectares want to take advantage of economies of scale and cost efficiency of using an autonomous weed removal machine. This may lead to the target market making decisions to acquire the machine.

  Autonomous weed removal is not a new concept and has been adopted by farmers in Europe and North America. However, it is still an emerging concept in Nigeria and parts of Africa where weeding remains a labour intensive and costly exercise, especially for large farms. While the existing autonomous weed removal solutions are usually not easily adaptable to the Nigerian crop production situation, it is imperative that a local solution is developed that suits the Nigerian crop production landscape. Developing a local autonomous weed removal machine for the Nigerian situation will enable farmers to record cost savings from labour and elimination of the usage of herbicides.

Acknowledgements

AgroXchange, a major partner of Nigeria Flying Labs, is a Nigeria-based digital technology company that uses satellite data to provide crop health information and monitoring to provide early warning for farmers, with the aim of improving crop yield.