Ecological Productivity Management Information System (EcoProMIS) for oil palm and rice in Colombia
Improving rice and palm oil production while reducing environmental impact, enhancing biodiversity and improving the social and economic conditions of smallholders
Project Lead
Agricompas
Target country(s)
Colombia
Project consortium
Agricompas, Pixalytics
International Partners
IWCO, Fedearroz
Project summary
Agricompas will be working with Pixalytics in the UK and Fedearroz and IWCO in Colombia to develop an Ecological Production Management Information System (EcoProMIS). This system will provide crop production knowledge to growers and decision support to key stakeholders in oil palm and rice value chains. This new knowledge will optimise production, efficiency and resilience to deliver solutions that enhance the environmental footprint of smallholder farmers and improve social and economic wellbeing.
Colombian smallholder rice and oil palm farmers need to improve productivity and stabilise incomes to allow them to compete globally and improve their livelihoods, whilst responding to climate change and realising a positive environmental impact.
The project will engage with smallholder farmers through outreach programmes to collect data and provide training, so that their skills and understanding on how crop management affects productivity, income and sustainable ecosystems is developed. Smartphones are used to communicate data and knowledge directly from and to farmers in the field.
EcoProMIS will create a Management Information System that combines crop production knowledge per field with economical, environmental and social information to provide commercial decision support to a wide range of stakeholders across the value chains such as input providers, (food) processors, insurance firms and governments to create a sustainable platform for knowledge to partners and decision support to crop stakeholders.
The project will create ongoing impact through a public-private partnership of farmers, research institutes and Agricompas that builds comprehensive sets of crop and ecosystem data and models to provide near real-time knowledge that is made freely available for the partners to improve the environmental, technical and financial efficiency of their processes.
Objectives
- Develop a sustainable land management protocol for rice and palm oil producers by September 2020.
- Increase Colombian farmer and smallholder incomes by $30 million per annum by 2022, through a 30% uptake of EcoProMIS and a 5% uplift in incomes in 2 crops with a combined value of $2 billion per annum.
- Have EcoProMIS in use by farms growing 30% of the rice and palm oil crop in Colombia by March 2021.
- Increase the area of rice and palm oil crops insured in Colombia by 25% by March 2021.
- Deliver a commercial decision support service (fee based) in areas growing rice and palm oil to the Colombian government, commercial agribusiness and crop insurers by May 2020.