ICT & Technology for Food Security in Nepal

Hello Everyone,

I am Pradeep Sapkota, social entrepreneur of SUNWay Research & Innovation Centre (SRIC) in Nepal. I am working on my dream: Making SRIC the smart farming demo centre in my commuity that can be copied by youngsters from other communities, villages and countries.

Why?

So that youngsters and young farmers in rural areas have access to smart technologies and hand tools that make farming less manual and labour-intensive and increase yields and food security in Nepal and other countries.

Everything we do in our demo centre is affordable, copyable, sustainable and bottom up. From the Power of Youngsters and our Community.

Since 2014, I have been participating in the international ONE WORLD Citizens (OWC) community, in which we share our ideas for change with young people from 16 countries and help each other to develop our ideas into local start-ups. OWC supports us as young social entrepreneurs bottom-up, such as with GoFundMe campaigns like mine, to organize start-up capital.

​

Why SRIC and smart farming?

80% of the people in Nepal are farmers and still farming in the traditional way, by hand. This makes farming a hard job. That is why youngsters from Nepal choose not to become farmers. Instead, they leave the country for a paid job in other countries. As a result, many men live abroad, far away from their families and communities and food security in Nepal is at risk.

This is why I started the SUNWay Innovation Centre (SRIC) to create informal education, research, experiment and entrepreneurship about ICT, technology and agriculture innovation with youth, women and young farmers in my community. To make agriculture attractive for youngsters and contribute to smart farming, food security, job creation and to stop the brain drain in Nepal.

In the SUNWay Innovation Centre we offer ICT basic training and Technology education by which youngsters, students and women can develop smart hand tools and technology solutions for smart farming. And by which young farmers can be trained to use the new tools and devices.

Our goal is to make the SUNWay Research & Innovation Centre (SRIC) a social enterprise, earning money from the education, services, and products we provide in our community. This is done through a step-by-step process so that we can continue to exist independently.

For example: the Wheel Hoe

And for example: the spray robot

The importance of a weather station

Right now, I am working on an affordable weather station, an online platform for data collecting and an app to control technical systems such as drip irrigation, ventilation, soil measuring etc. by which farmers can keep an eye on their crops while turning on and off the systems from home or any place. In this way the agriculture work become less hard and the yields increase. This innovation is very important at the moment, because of the climate change.

In Nepal, rural farmers cannot get real-time weather data. Data informing them of temperature, humidity, wind direction, wind speed, soil moisture, PH, rainfall, etc. IoT-based weather stations help farmers receive and interpret current weather data so they can easily be able to take action in case of drought, heavy rain, etc. With the data and action, farmers are able to protect their crops in time and increase their yields.

That's why at SRIC we started building our own weather station from scratch by assembling hardware (sensors) and coding. In this way we have built our own mobile and web applications to monitor weather data and know exactly how to maintain and repair it. Through this self-learning approach, we are now able to teach young people, students and educators how to build their own affordable weather station and teach farmers how to install and operate the weather station in their fields.

What we need to bring the weather station project to the next level

To make the next steps in development and increase the impact of the weather station and mobile application, we want to start collecting the data from 10 places on our platform. 

By collecting the data from 10 farmers, we learn how to interpret and use the data to promote food security, even in times of drought due to climate change.

What we need in 2 phases

Phase 1

For this we need the materials to make 10 weather stations.

Phase 2

Besides the devices we also need the materials for the construction and online data platform

Highlights of 2024

The highlight of the project during this year is : "Lora-based Smart Weather Monitoring Device", “Portable Smart Greenhouse “, and “ Bluetooth Controlled and Obstacle Avoidance Robot”.

Future Plans

In the coming months, I would like to completely set up the Innovation Lab by having all necessary tools and electronic components where we can perform various activities like:

It would be amazing if we can make this happen at SRIC in 2024 by & for youngsters, women and young farmers, with your help!

We greatly appreciate any help.

Warmly,

Pradeep