A Feed the Future Innovation Lab is tapping into tech to support farmers in the fight against pests and diseases that destroy their crops.

David P. Hughes, director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Current and Emerging Threats to Crops at Penn State University, spoke plainly about the primary challenge his team is confronting when he addressed the Harvard Radcliffe Institute Science symposium in 2023: How do we feed 10 billion people in a world that is 2 degrees Celsius above historical norms?

It’s an intimidating question, but Hughes was optimistic about efforts contributing to the solution: the Innovation Lab’s PlantVillage platform, which includes a free mobile phone app that helps farmers monitor, forecast and take steps to mitigate the effects of climate change on pests and agricultural diseases. In April of this year, PlantVillage was launched in Zambia, where farmers’ livelihoods are threatened by disease and pests affecting cassava, maize, sweet potatoes and other crops; Zambian cassava farmers in particular lose $150 million to crop diseases every year.

Field technicians from the PlantVillage Zambia team help trainees in Luapula Province, Zambia, learn about the features of the PlantVillage app. Photo courtesy of Mathias Tembo, principal investigator and project lead, PlantVillage Zambia.

“We think [PlantVillage] is the necessary component to meet global food security under climate change, particularly for those individuals in the Global South,” Hughes said. “The way in which we push forward development in every industrial society in the world is through the patient, repeated exchange of knowledge at the farmgate.”

The app utilizes artificial intelligence technology to help farmers identify pests and diseases and provides knowledge and next steps to tackle them. The Innovation Lab is deploying agricultural extension experts and graduate youth to train farmers on using the platform — currently working in 10 districts of Zambia.

“Young people are a bridge to technology,” Hughes said. “So, these are AI-powered, cloud-enabled, supercomputer-charged youth who are acting as a bridge to the farmers. Because they are literally the sons and daughters of farmers, they have this implicit trust in the system.”

These young people are graduates from various universities and work alongside extension experts to survey pests and diseases on local farmland. They input their data into the PlantVillage app, which stores the information then offers solutions and next steps for farmers.

Although the app was just recently introduced in Zambia, it is already making a difference among researchers and farmers alike. Mathias Tembo, senior agricultural research officer at Zambia Agriculture Research Institute and principal investigator for PlantVillage in Zambia, shared with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa publication in April that the PlantVillage app technology “has been tested against experts from the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture in its ability to identify pests and diseases, [and] it was equal in strength in identifying these pests and diseases, and it was further tested against the extension officers.”

Cathrine Namonje (middle), a technical officer for the PlantVillage Zambia project, demonstrates to two trainee farmers how to use the PlantVillage app in the Luapula Province of Zambia. Photo courtesy of Mathias Tembo, principal investigator and project lead, PlantVillage Zambia.

Tembo explained that major crops in Zambia that are vulnerable to pests and disease include cassava — a staple crop for approximately 30 percent of Zambians — which is affected by cassava mosaic disease and cassava brown streak disease. Sweet potato is affected by sweet potato virus diseases, and maize is affected by the maize fall armyworm, which causes significant damage. Wheat, tomatoes and groundnuts are also affected by various toxins and diseases.

Climate change is a major driver of these threats to local agriculture, because increases in temperature and precipitation levels can cause insect infestation and disease to increase and spread more widely, according to the USDA Climate Hub.

Tembo explained that PlantVillage’s efforts in Zambia also aim to enhance overall soil health as “a healthy growing crop indirectly protects itself from pests and diseases,” he explained. A healthy growing crop also establishes a pipeline to produce more disease-resistant cassava planting materials for smallholder farmers. Reducing crop losses for farmers through various means, he said, is the main goal.

The project is just beginning to engage smallholder farmers — most of which are women over the age of 55 and who are very low-income — and the team aims to reach out to 20,000 such farmers, said Tembo, adding he is very encouraged by the results so far.

“Its [the app’s] ability to provide a platform allowing farmers to receive on-spot and bespoke advice from government and academic experts is just so excellent,” he said.

So far, PlantVillage has been warmly received in Zambia, with the app featured across major news networks and newspapers in the country. Most crucial, though, is the benefit for smallholder farmers on the ground, like John Muwa, who lives in the Luapula Province of Zambia.

“Now that the experts visited my farm, I will be a better farmer and increase my yields,” he said.