“The rapid increase in sophisticated agricultural apps is providing new tools for more accurate crop production management,” says Colleen Scherer of editiondigital.net. “Although smartphones and apps were first introduced in 2007, over the past two to three years their use by farmers has increased dramatically. The adoption of smartphones and tablets has allowed agribusiness professionals to carry mini computers into fields to help farmers improve how they grow their crops in a short amount of time.”
Smartphones are revolutionising the way farmers run their operations. Europe and the USA are fortunate to have many modern and sophisticated farming apps specifically designed for certain geographical regions.
Why not here?
On investigation, however, I found that many of these excellent tools are not available for download in South Africa.We need to investigate why these have not been adapted for use here. For example, a good app is the Bayer Weed Spotter, but it’s only available – that is, it only ‘works’ – in the UK. Maybe organised agriculture needs to ask Bayer why a South African version is not available, considering the large tracts of arable land at our disposal.
New From Pannar
One app that does work here is the Pannar Disease Identification app. Available in English and Afrikaans, it’s intended for field use to identify maize diseases and disorders. It’s only 0,2MB and thus a quick download for farmers with a poor Internet connection. The app offers a brief description of some of the most important diseases in maize and Pannar is currently adding wheat diseases. The app covers leaf, stalk, ear and tassel diseases and physiological disorders. Each entry includes symptoms and colour photographs.
You can also contact Pannar directly by filling in a form and pressing the ‘Send’ button. When tested on an Android phone, the app had relatively small text that could not be magnified in the usual way by using the thumb and index finger. This is something that Pannar will sort out, I’m sure, as the spectacle generation is likely to battle with text this size.
