From Latvia to Israel to the Ivory Coast, 360 start-ups from the agricultural sector presented their technological innovations at the first AgriTech4Morroco challenge. For its first edition, the initiative of Impact Lab, the World Bank and the platform “Accelerating for Impact”, focused on sustainable food in the world.
Among the 10 selected projects is From Sand to Green. The Moroccan start-up is creating new arable land by rehabilitating arid land into orchards and using a solar-powered desalination system as well as carbon offsetting mechanisms. This initiative competed at the start of the competition with start-up AgriScan, which has developed handheld sensors that collect soil data to help Moroccan farmers optimise their fertilisation decisions.
Israeli company YieldsApp also caught the jury’s attention with its artificial intelligence technology that provides an accurate diagnosis of soil health while minimising the use of phytosanitary products such as pesticides and herbicides. All of these platforms will showcase their innovations at a demonstration day in July 2022.
While technologies allow agri-food systems to modernise the entire value chain, the projects of these rural entrepreneurs will provide digital services to the 2 million farmers who will be connected by 2030, according to the Moroccan Ministry of Agriculture, Maritime Fishing, Rural Development and Water and Forests.
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AgriTech4Morocco is also supported by the Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA), the International Alliance for Biodiversity (CIAT), the Digital Agriculture Pole (PAD) and the German Agency for International Development Cooperation (GIZ) in Morocco.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi