AgroTutor: a mobile phone application supporting sustainable agricultural intensification

Traditional agricultural extension services rely on extension workers, especially in countries with large agricultural areas. In order to increase adoption of sustainable agriculture, the recommendations given by such services must be adapted to local conditions and be provided in a timely manner. The AgroTutor mobile application was built to provide highly specific and timely agricultural recommendations to farmers across Mexico and complement the work of extension agents. At the same time, AgroTutor provides direct contributions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, either by advancing their implementation or providing local data systems to measure and monitor specific indicators such as the proportion of agricultural area under productive and sustainable agriculture. The application is freely available and allows farmers to geo-locate and register plots and the crops grown there, using the phone’s built-in GPS, or alternatively, on top of very high-resolution imagery. Once a crop and some basic data such as planting date and cultivar type have been registered, the application provides targeted information such as weather, potential and historical yield, financial benchmarking information, data-driven recommendations, and commodity price forecasts. Farmers are also encouraged to contribute in-situ information, e.g., soils, management, and yield data. The information can then be used by crop models, which, in turn, send tailored results back to the farmers. Initial feedback from farmers and extension agents has already improved some of the application’s characteristics. More enhancements are planned for inclusion in the future to increase the application’s function as a decision support tool.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Laso Bayas, J.C., Gardeazabal Monsalue, A., Karner, M., Folberth, C., Vargas, L., Skalsky, R., Balkovic, J., Subash, A., Saad, M., Delerce, S., Crespo Cuaresma, J., Hlouskova, J., Molina-Maturano, J., See, L., Fritz, S., Obersteiner, M., Govaerts, B.
Format:	Article biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	MDPI 2020
Subjects:	AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES AND BIOTECHNOLOGY, Volunteered Geographic Information, Agricultural Intensification, Smart Farming, Citizen Science, SDGs, INTENSIFICATION, SUSTAINABILITY, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS, DECISION SUPPORT, PUBLIC PARTICIPATION,
Online Access:	https://hdl.handle.net/10883/21006
Tags:	Add Tag No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!