Technological transformation for rural development

The introduction of technologies in farming is a process that seeks to promote better productivity on farms, with fewer losses along the chain, and to improve the quality of life of the rural population. Promoting rural development and the well-being of farmers can be achieved through the digitization of agriculture, which requires accompanying processes for the development of digital skills and technological appropriation with which farmers can make use of the different tools available to them to optimize their agricultural management.

On this front, in Tierra Colombia project we have worked with about 100 coffee growers from Meta department, in the municipalities of Lejanías, Mesetas and San Juan de Arama. With them, in recent months we have developed the contents of a curriculum on ICT appropriation, which sought to bring them closer to the digital world. This training process started from the basics: how to turn on the cell phone, how to take a photo, how to configure the phone settings, among other topics, and progressed until it reached the knowledge and use of useful applications for their production processes on the farms, such as X-farm or Coffee Agenda.

These two applications allow coffee growers to systematize information on their farms and crops, identify risks, generate alerts about processes, have financial reports that facilitate decision-making, among other functionalities that aim to achieve better management of productive processes.

With X-Farm, coffee growers can make a detailed record of their activities, entering data on the tools they use, the personnel who carry out the work, the products they use and the costs of each of these products. With this data in the system, the app produces financial reports that become an input for coffee growers to make decisions and have better control of the processes of their farms and their crops.

On the other hand, with Coffee Agenda, coffee growers can create a calendar of activities following the phenological process of coffee. In this app, they can keep track of the cultivation process, a detailed schedule of flowering, fertilizations and phytosanitary management, make harvest forecasts and other functionalities, with which they can better understand the stages of the coffee process and take early actions for the improvement of their crops.

It should be noted that the management of these applications is a step in the ICT appropriation process that we have developed with coffee growers. The accompaniment so that digital literacy was possible and had results, was carried out in a personalized way with each coffee farmer on his farm and a guide was built with the all the step for using the cell phone, as the main tool, and of the applications.

The purpose of these processes of appropriation and use of technology applied to agriculture that we develop in Tierra Colombia project is that coffee growers know the technology, incorporate it into their agronomic activities and experience how it becomes a useful vehicle to improve their production processes and their quality of life.

Tierra Colombia is a Lavazza Foundation project that we developed with Alo & Partners, with the support of SAFE Platform and with Microsoft and xFarm technology. Learn more at https://makaia.org/en/portfolio/tierra-colombia-technology-transformation/

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