With sustainability and productivity challenges mounting, South African farmers warm to agro-technology

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Farmers have now found ways to improve the basic farming methods with state-of-the-art agritech.

Senior researcher in advanced agriculture at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Sabelo Madonsela said there is no way that farmers, no matter the commodity, could postpone the usage of technology in their operations any longer.

Madonsela said farmers are now finding themselves having to navigate the application of drone technology, especially in the commercial space in order to monitor the conditions of the crops and soil conditions.

According to Madonsela, there has been an increase in drone companies that are coming up because farmers are using drone technology to monitor the application of fertilisers, input, and water use.

“Drones are one of the big technologies that farmers are moving into. We are using drones for developing algorithms to predict certain variables like water quantity in crops and they are mostly used to develop the sector for both commercial and small-scale farmers.

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Madonsela said farmers are likely to benefit if they have information that they can work with because they can customise the application to the conditions of their farm.

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