Satellites Provide Insight to Burundi Coffee Growers

by | May 30, 2017

A staggering 30 percent of Burundi's population depends upon coffee production as its primary source of income, so any increase in the yield and quality of this crop will have a marked effect upon the nation's GDP and help drive economic development throughout the country.

Earth-i teamed with WeatherSafe to support coffee farmers of Burundi through Earth-i's ACCORD program, which combines high-resolution satellite imagery with crop analysis to provide stakeholders with critical insights on key coffee farming decisions to improve crop quality, thereby supporting sustainable growth for coffee farmers large and small.

Burundi's current coffee yields are only about a fifth of those seen in Asia and Central America, so there's significant scope to improve productivity if threats such as coffee leaf rust and parasites can be successfully contained.

In partnership with the World Bank and the International Development Fund, the Government of Burundi launched a program for the Productivity and Development of Agricultural Markets (PRODEMA), which aims to improve food security through increased production and improved market access for agricultural and livestock products important for domestic consumption.

To assist PRODEMA in meeting the goals of its coffee sector support project, Earth-i and WeatherSafe will fulfil a number of vital functions: combining satellite imagery with algorithms to automatically identify coffee plantation plots from satellite imagery, extracting key features such as roads and coffee washing stations, and providing an estimation of the number of trees and yield.

Local ground surveys will validate the results, which are expected to provide real insights to the Burundi coffee industry, with the stated aim of helping to improve the competitiveness of the coffee industry in Burundi.

 

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