NIRSAL, Microsoft collaborate to boost farming productivity

To mitigate environmental risks to agriculture, the Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) and Microsoft are collaborating to boost farmers productivity.

The collaboration will significantly reduce or eliminate high-risk environment challenges to farmers like irregular rainfall, degraded soils, pests, water scarcity, and more.

The elimination of such risk across the agricultural value chain to foster more sustainable investment into the agricultural industry is a key mission objective of NIRSAL.

A statement from NIRSAL said the organisation has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Microsoft to collaborate in the deployment of the Microsoft Azure FarmBeats platform to help Nigerian farmers become more productive, reduce costs, practice sustainable agriculture and achieve better agricultural outcomes.

NIRSAL is a US$500 million non-bank financial institution, wholly-owned by the Central Bank of Nigeria, established in 2013 to stimulate the flow of affordable finance and investments into the country's agricultural sector by de-risking the agribusiness finance value chain.

By organising 4 million hectares (owned by 8 million farmers) into 16,000 NIRSAL AgroGeoCoops of 250 hectares each, NIRSAL aims to remove barriers to better financing for farmers. This will also allow for easier and more affordable deployment of modern technology for AgroGeoCoops.

NIRSAL said it turned to Microsoft Azure FarmBeats "to enable Comprehensive Farm Monitoring which is critical to the NIRSAL Credit Risk Guarantee (CRG) to financiers and investors to minimise the risks associated with agriculture and agribusiness finance and investments.ÔÇØ

Microsofts Azure FarmBeats it said "is a purpose-built, agricultural cloud platform that enables the aggregation of agricultural data and generation of actionable insights into farm health and conditions, soil moisture, crop layout and farm population by harnessing the power of Artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and Cloud technology.ÔÇØ

Speaking on the collaboration, Aliyu Abdulhameed, NIRSAL's Managing Director/CEO said "the sustainability and growth of the agricultural sector is crucial for the development of the country and its people.

He noted that "Azure FarmBeats will be the tool that will help us to analyse the data being produced from these farms and all the possible ways we can use it to stabilise the agricultural value chain and boost the confidence of investors to eliminate barriers to the free flow of finance and investment to agribusiness in Nigeria.ÔÇØ

Also speaking at the signing ceremony was Akin Banuso, Country Manager, Microsoft Nigeria Limited, said: "Microsoft is excited to be working with NIRSAL to promote precision agriculture in Nigeria by leveraging both the experience and field structure established by NIRSAL to transform the agricultural space in the country and empower those who work within it by using Microsoft's purpose-built, industry-specific cloud platform FarmBeats to drive innovation in the industryÔÇØ.

Agriculture is one of the longest-standing practices in the world, and yet it remains unpredictable. Farmers use their instincts and experience to know when to plant crops, how much and where, but external and uncontrollable factors can impact the productivity and profitability of farms. This, in turn, can affect a farm's viability and accessibility to funding and investment.

With this partnership, NIRSAL is now able to help farmers analyse weather conditions, temperature, water conditions and so much more in real-time to inform better decision-making to optimise agricultural output and therefore lessen the risks to investors and attract more funding in Nigeria.

The Nation