10 million Kenyans are at risk of hunger in the first half of 2023 and over 5 million of these are already in stress situations that require organised food aid. This is of course due to failure of rains in the country for five consecutive seasons now. To make matters worse, reports from critical organisations such as the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) have warned that agriculture in the country is failing. There is therefore a need to look into ways of adopting precision agriculture which means farming to improve crop yields by aiding management decisions through use of high technology sensors and analysis tools.
Due to the climate change pressures on critical agricultural resources such as arable lands, water bodies, and forests across the nation, there is definitely dire need to optimise not only crop yield per unit area but also each input of food production. This means that in Kenya, the key factors that should drive precision agriculture include the need for resource optimization and the growing awareness of implementing digital agriculture.
Designing soil and crop management strategies in relation to changes in field conditions related to soil type, moisture, and nutrients is something that the Kenyan farmer is well familiar with as small-scale farmers in pre-Agricultural Revolution sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) promoted this technique. According to Onyango (2021) and his associates, in their article, Precision Agriculture for Efficient Resource Utilisation in Small-Scale Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, they show how planned agricultural practices based on site conditions are used to optimise the use of land resources and external inputs.
However, after the use of inorganic fertilisers was introduced, the practice was largely abandoned and replaced by blanket recommendations, a subject that many Kenyan farmers are trying to deal with today. On the other hand, although the world’s cropland remains largely rain-fed, many farmers who rely on irrigation have switched from traditional techniques to water-saving ones such as drip and sprinkler irrigation. According to Monteiro, Santos, and Gonçalves (2021),
“technologies such as sensors and GPS enable precise water and fertiliser applications based on detailed knowledge of crop health, animal health, soil conditions, and more.”
Other advances include soil spectroscopy and infrared light for analysing soil nutrients and pH levels. These data can be used by Kenyan farmers to protect their soil and target their inputs. Ideally, precision agriculture is still largely confined to relatively high-income countries. However, resource efficiency can be achieved without sophisticated data. Smallholder farmers in resource-poor countries save significant amounts of fertiliser by adding fertiliser directly to the seed at the time of sowing, known as micro-dosing. This saves resources and increases drought tolerance.
In other words, the most promising precision agriculture techniques identified are the use of soil and crop sensors for nutrient and water management, and the use of satellite imagery, GIS, and farmland simulation models for site-specific management. These technologies have proven critical in achieving a good management strategy in terms of efficiency and effectiveness of resource usage in SSA.