Precision Agriculture for All - Accessible Precision Agriculture

XPRIZE

Precision agriculture tools that are affordable, accessible across the digital divide, context specific, and widely available for smallholder farmers to help them make optimal growing and harvesting decisions.

Stipulations: The winning team will create precision agriculture tools that will be affordable, easy to operate even in developing nations, and will increase the productivity and efficiency of smallholdings.

Importance: Smallholder farmers provide up to 80% of the food supply in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and are some of the poorest and most food insecure people in the world. These small family farms are under pressure as population growth creates land competition, prices for their products drop, costs of inputs rise, public services fall away, natural resources degrade, and the impacts of climate change take hold. This XPRIZE will help smallholder farmers make the most out of their land, thus improving food security in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, as well as protecting the environment.

NickOttens

@arshimehboob, I remember you wrote about precision farming when we were doing the Future of Food Impact Roadmap. What are your thoughts on this as an XPRIZE competition?

NickOttens

We would like to invite the community to analyze this prize idea from the perspective of six stakeholder groups:

1. Finance and investment
2. Culture and activism
3. Community builders and connectors
4. Multinational corporations
5. Policymakers and regulators
6. Entrepreneurs and innovators

When you put yourself in the shoes in one of these groups, how might this prize idea change? Are there things you would add, amplify, or modify?