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AI-Powered Robot Maker TartanSense Raises $2 Mn From Omnivore, Blume
TartanSense has planned to use this fresh funding to scale up its first product, BrijBot. Which is an artificial intelligence backed robot, designed to assist small cotton farmers in the weeding process.
- Categories
 - Agriculture, Technology
 
- Region
 - South Asia
 
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Report: Biodiversity crisis: Technological advances in agriculture are not a sufficient response
Rapid population and economic growth are destroying biodiversity. A growing demand for agricultural products requires ever new cultivated areas. Even though technological advances are making agriculture more efficient, the growing population makes up for these successes. Effective nature conservation needs concepts against population growth and for sustainable consumption.
- Categories
 - Agriculture, Environment, Technology
 
- Tags
 - agtech
 
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Coffee, Cocoa, and the Cutting Edge
Deforestation is threatening crop diversity and jeopardizing the livelihoods of millions of poor small farmers around the world. But innovative technologies and better access to financing can help farmers to counter some of these risks.
- Categories
 - Agriculture, Environment, Finance, Technology
 
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Press release: Hello Tractor and CTA launch partnership to support smallholder farmers access mechanisation
Across sub-Saharan Africa, farmers face some of the lowest rates of mechanisation. Despite the benefits of tractor mechanisation, cost and access have been key impediments to its widespread adoption.
- Source
 - Press release
 
- Categories
 - Agriculture, Technology
 
- Region
 - Sub-Saharan Africa
 
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Mercy Corps unveils $5 million AgriFin Digital Farmer initiative in Kenya
The program will result in increased smallholder farmer inclusion, productivity and income, as well as a range of digitally enabled models and institutional partners to drive inclusive agricultural transformation with direct benefit to smallholders throughout Africa.
- Categories
 - Agriculture, Technology
 
- Region
 - Sub-Saharan Africa
 
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Quick Wins for Digital Agriculture: Why Digitizing Aggregation Centers is a Fast Path to Long-Term Impact for Smallholders
Discussion of digital agriculture innovation often focuses on buzzworthy technologies like the internet of things, artificial intelligence and blockchain. But though these technologies will eventually define the future of the sector, Ananth R Gudipati at the World Food Programme and Paul Kweheria at Mercy Corps say we should start with the basics – getting farmer organizations and SMEs to use digital tech to streamline their operations. They share insights from a digital platform developed by the Farm to Market Alliance that’s doing just that.
- Categories
 - Agriculture, Technology
 
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Nigeria’s Hello Tractor in AI, blockchain partnership with IBM Research
Nigerian agri-tech startup Hello Tractor has partnered IBM Research to pilot an agriculture digital wallet and decision-making tool that provides demand and supply visibility for farmers, tractor fleet providers and banks.
- Categories
 - Agriculture, Technology
 
- Region
 - Sub-Saharan Africa
 
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A Roadmap to Food Security: Linking Geodata with Financial Inclusion to Support Smallholders
Smallholder farmers produce a staggering 70 percent of the world’s food, making them essential to food security. Geodata applications have been shown to improve these farmers’ yields and even boost their financial access – one of the main obstacles to increasing production. To help tap into these benefits, NpM’s Innovator’s Challenge brought together 17 tech companies with geodata-based solutions for smallholder financial inclusion. NpM director Josien Sluijs discusses the winning companies, and the broader potential of geodata-based innovation.
- Categories
 - Agriculture, Finance, Social Enterprise, Technology