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IBM Research has partnered with Hello Tractor, a US-based technology company, to enhance the African agricultural industry with blockchain. The partnership was featured in a post on the December 11 blog on the official IBM website.
According to the post, the IBM Research division in Kenya is working with Hello Tractor developers to apply various tools and technologies, including blockchain, to the Hello Tractor mobile platform that allows farmers to access on-demand tractor services.
Specifically, IBM Research scientists will incorporate blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to the Hello Tractor tools platform. IBM Research also intends to integrate the platform with its own IBM Cloud cloud solution, as well as with Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture, a jointly developed agri-food tool based on artificial intelligence (AI).
The new jointly developed platform will represent a "digital agricultural portfolio" with a blockchain-based platform that will provide a high level of transparency of data shared instantly between all parties involved in a given agro-business value chain.
In particular, it is expected that the pilot will address a wide range of processes in the agricultural sector, such as the prediction of crop yield by farmers, fleet management and predictive maintenance and the completion of the loan portfolio for farmers and tractor owners by banks, as well as investment and settlement processes by governments.
According to IBM, less than 20% of crops are run by tractors and other machinery in sub-Saharan Africa to date, while food demand is steadily increasing due to population growth averaging 11 million at the 39; year. In addition, around 50% of farmers experience significant crop losses each year, caused by poor planting practices.
Last week, the blockchain wing of Overstock.com Doctors Ventures bought $ 2.5 million in equity in the GrainChain agricultural blockchain project, which allows supply chain parties to follow the crop distribution process.
At the beginning of this year, the Ethiopian government signed a memorandum with Cardano cryptographic initiation (ADA) in order to apply blockchain technology to the country's agri-food industry.
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