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When It Comes To Tech, These Rice Farmers Are Outstanding In Their Field

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Dust and noise from a passing rice harvester swirl around Colombian rice farmer Campo Elias Urrutia as he tells of a coming rice doomsday – easing of trade restrictions from a US trade deal means cheap US rice will likely start to pour into Colombia in the next three years. 

But high-tech help is close by: Campo Elias is standing next to high tech sensors measuring carbon dioxide, methane, solar radiation and meteorological data – part of a project to make Colombian rice price-competitive with cheap imports.  

Rice is a vital Colombian staple and it is now the key crop of central Colombia's tropical grassland plains – Los Llanos.  In 2007, 461,000 hectares (1.1 million acres) of rice were sown in Colombia for an output of 2.5 million metric tonnes (2.75 million short tons). 

Facing the threat of reduced yields from climate change, cheap imports and other challenges, the Colombian Rice Grower’s Federation, FedeArroz, has teamed up with a consortium of scientific institutions like Rothamsted Research and private companies to develop a platform called the Ecological Production Management Information System – EcoProMIS

A combination of satellites, drones, handheld devices, IOT weather stations, crop inspections and farmer interviews all feed into the system, where the data is crunched by machine learning, AI and crop modelling. 

For example, heat sensors in the drones detect “sick” rice plants, giving farmers exact data on which parts of the field are infected. 

The benefits are two-fold: farmers can get near-real-time data on the health and projected yield of their crops, while insurance companies can better assess risk – hopefully increasing the alarmingly low prevalence of farm insurance in Colombia.  

Roelof Kramer is CEO of Agricompas Limited, one of the partners in the consortium that came together to win £3.9m ($5 million) in initial funding from the UK Space Agency’s International Partnership Programme.

"Overall, the main goals of the project include increasing the area of rice and palm oil crops insured in Colombia 25 percent by 2021 and the collective incomes of Colombian farmers and smallholders by $30 million annually by 2022."

Roelof Kramer – CEO of Agricompas Limited

In order to address community concerns about farmers giving their data to a third party, the project, which began in February of 2018 and will continue until April 2021, has partnered with local organisations.

Kramer says crop federations like Fedearroz will pass science advances on to farmers; research institutes will conduct further research on climate change effects and genetic improvements; and community group Solidaridad is giving socio-economic support to small-holder growers.

Ricardo Perafan, the executive director at FedeArroz’s research centre in Aguazul, Colombia told me rice is the last cereal grown in Colombia with local varieties – almost all the wheat in Colombia is imported and almost all corn is from imported seed.

"But we only have two farms in the pilot project, so this is just the beginning of greater, integrated actions," he said.

When the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (formally known as the United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement or CTPA) came into force in May of 2012, Colombia’s rice attracted a tariff of 80% but those will soon be phased out completely.

Back in his rice field, Urrutia is hopeful. 

“The EcoProMis program will help keep the Colombian rice industry alive, but, we won’t be competitive until the Colombian farmer has the control and management of his product, is supplied with appropriate machines and tools for the development of the work, has real ownership of the land, and has a state agricultural policy where the campesino and the nation converge together,” he said.

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