The recent roll-out of a new mobile app by the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA) is seeking to transform the way how information sharing, technical processes and other support data are passed on to farmers and other stakeholders within the local agriculture sector.

The mobile application launched late last year was designed to among other things, foster communication and knowledge sharing while offering a wide range of technical support, data management and other features for use by farmers and even some non-farmers.

“With this new app farmers now have the ability to gain access to a wealth of important information about the sector on crop and lifestyle productions, while also being able to share updates on their individual progress in the area. Additionally, they also now have the option of using the available features to request visits to their farms from RADA extension officers,” Senior Programmer Hartnell Campbell said, in response to queries from the
Jamaica Observer about the technology recently.

“When requesting visits, farmers can now set a date, time and even a reason for the purpose of the visit. They, however, have to be listed among registered farmers to request these visits,” he noted, while indicating that to date, almost 800 installs of the app have been done with approximately 150 farmers having already requested visits based on data from that section of the app.

“One of the things that the app will allow is that if you are a farmer in the field and you have a smartphone and you see something on your crop or animal acting up and you can’t understand it, instead of calling and having to wait for an extension officer to visit, you can take a picture of what you see happening and send it in real time to RADA and you will get a response in real time. What we’re therefore doing is to leverage the use of the technology to bring greater services to our farmers even from the click of a button,” Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Floyd Green said in comments about the new app.

The app currently available for download from the
Google
Play Store provides real-time updates for farmers including relevant information on upcoming workshops and training. It also seeks to expose them to information on crop-management techniques, pest-control management and sustainable farming practices amid heightened climate-change concerns.

Touting its ability to drive efficiency as it builds greater synergy across the sector, the new RADA technology, Campbell said, will also aid other divisions including the Ministry of Agriculture’s Praedial Larceny Unit in executing on some of its own prevention and anti-farm theft initiatives.

“Farmers travelling on the road should have an ID or a valid Jamaica Agricultural Society (JAS) receipt book, hence a check of our data base can help to confirm the status of registration and validity of farmer information,” he noted, as he also encouraged more farmers to download the app and, for those who have already done so, to keep their information updated and current.

The app enables registered farmers to view all of their personal and farming details. Industry statistics indicate that there are some 250,000 farmers who are registered locally.

RADA as an agency of the Ministry of Agriculture by virtue of its mandate is therefore, with this latest app, seeking to enhance the development of farming with added channels that aim to deliver effective, efficient and sustainable extension service that will also improve the quality of life for farmers.

No stranger to app development, the entity has over the years piloted a number of technologies which, among other things, have sought to increase transparency for the sector as it streamlines projects and services, as it also empowers farmers and their livelihoods.

Campbell, in pointing to the roll-out of at least two other technologies now being worked on, said that these will help the organisation to further streamline its operations as it brings more digital solutions for the sector. These, he said, included a new internal app for extension officers which is to help with updating farmer information while out in the field, even without the Internet, while the other is a mobile app for the police that will help them to check farmer data when conducting their day-to-day duties.

“In [short order] RADA will also begin to institutionalise the use of drones to gather general farm data on production areas and potential production areas and to provide information to farmers on crop and livestock health, to help with the monitoring of watersheds and protected areas, and to document disaster and aid with estimates of loss,” he stated.