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Something was wrong with Edemanwan Eyo Basseys chickens. Their movements seemed slower, more lethargic, like they were becoming paralyzed, she said. But as a new farmer in a remote part of southern Nigeria, she didnt know where to turn. Her region has a shortage of extension agents (EAs), government workers who provide expert agricultural advice. I couldnt get across to my EA, said Eyo Bassey. So I asked AI, ‘Why are my birds walking funny?’ The AI assistant told her it could be a kind of Newcastle disease, a highly contagious viral infection that can cause paralysis and death in infected poultry. Hotter temperatures and heavier rains linked to climate change can leave poultry more vulnerable to the virus. The tool told her to try the LaSota vaccine to prevent further spread. “I was able to give treatment to the birds and save them,” she said. Farmers across the globe, including tens of thousands of African farmers, are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to stay ahead of shifting weather patterns, respond to pests and diseases, and connect with buyers. For many, AI is an inexpensive lifeline as other lines of aidincluding from the United Statesdry up. [Photo: courtesy Plant Village] Since starting her farm two years ago, Eyo Bassey has asked Farmer.chat, an AI tool developed by the San Francisco nonprofit Digital Green, how to keep tiny flies called aphids off her pepper plants and which poultry breeds thrive in rainforest-rich Cross River State. The tools weather forecast helps her know when to heat her chicken coop. She poses questions in English, but the chatbot, which is used by more than 50,000 farmers across Africa, also responds to Hausa, an Indigenous language in Nigeria. The last growing cycle was difficult for many poultry farmers, according to Eyo Bassey: About 100 birds died at a nearby farm, and many birds were underweight, including hers. But her Noiler chickens survived, which she attributes to their breed and her weather preparations. With the AI, I’ve been able to reduce the mortality rate of my birds, she said. AI has also expanded the reach of overstretched extension agents. For years, Veronica Igbana, director of extension services for Benue State, struggled to keep up with farmers requests for in-person visits in Nigerias Benue State, where the agent-to-farmer ratio is 1 to 23,000, she said. Since she started using Farmer.chat last year, shes taught 170 peoplefarmers and both government and private sector extension agentsto use the tool themselves. “They’re able to help reduce my workload,” she said. “It gives me an opportunity to face other assignments.” AI is far from a cure-all for agriculture in a changing climate. The hardware and software that drive the technology drain resources like water and electricity, rely on unsustainably mined minerals, and produce electronic waste. But AI is becoming critical for the officials making decisions that can determine farmers’ livelihoods, according to Catherine Nakalembe, a geospatial scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA. By combining many different data setsrainfall, temperature, soil moisture, vegetation conditionsAI can reveal why certain agricultural areas are underperforming and guide large-scale interventions, like investment in new irrigation infrastructure, pesticide spraying, or food aid. Nakalembe, who is from Uganda and researches agriculture and food security in Africa, said these tools are most effective when they incorporate local knowledge and expertise. “If you co-develop an app with extension agents, you can further improve it. They give a lot of really good feedback about all sorts of things,” she said. “It’s supposed to help them do their job rather than replace them.” Evolving digital tools help farmers adapt AI chatbots have gained momentum among remote smallholder farmers and extension workers in the last two years, according to Eric Firnhaber, director of global communications at Digital Green. That growth has been fueled by advances in cloud computing that have enabled offline use, improved language access, and lowered costs. Many tools, like Darli AI, a chatbot from the Ghana-based company Farmerline, are being developed in Africa. Other U.S. and European nonprofits collaborate with African farmers, extension agents, and researchers. Digital Green has offices in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Nigeria, and has been working on the ground with African farmers since 2008. Plant Village, which reaches about 15 million African farmers per season through various media channels, works closely with extension officers in Africa. Creating tools in Africa is important, because a lot can go wrong when AI lacks local context, Nakalembe said. AI mapping platforms, for instance, often flub critical details, mistaking cacao crops for forest because the plant grows beneath trees, and rice fields for wetlands because they look similar from afar. “If you zoom in, you start to see a whole bunch of issues, because the people who need to use it are not the ones developing it,” Nakalemebe said. Those collaborations have been paying off. In 2020 and 2021, when locusts swarmed East Africa, eating everything in sight, the AI app eLocust3developed by Plant Villagecollected farmers’ photos and GPS coordinates, fueling a geospatial system that predicted where the insects would travel next. That enabled targeted pesticide spraying that protected tens of millions of farmers’ livelihoods and $1.7 billion worth of crops, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. [Photo: courtesy Plant Village] It’s a landscape that’s changing on a daily basis, where we’re seeing cheaper, better models come out, said Annalyse McCloskey, operations director for Plant Village, an agricultural technology nonprofit at Penn State University. Plant Village is testing several different large language models (LLMs) to improve its AI chatbot, Nuru. The bot can glean a lot from a photo of a farm, such as the crop stage of growth, and the farms soil type and tilling practices. It also pulls in satellite data on soil moisture and evapotranspirationconditions affected by climate change. Farmers have traditionally relied on generational knowledge, but in the past 12,000 years of the agricultural era, weve never farmed under these conditions, McCloskey said. We need data to be coming in from the ground and then interpreted by scientists and AI to make predictions to better support farmers’ decisions. [Photo: courtesy Plant Village] Justine Ong’ala, a 50-year-old farmer in Busia, in western Kenya, recently used the Plant Village app to identify cassava mosaic disease in her seedlings and save her crop; higher temperatures and rainfall shifts can promote whiteflies that spread the virus. Like Igbana in Nigeria, Ongalas connection to Plant Village has had a ripple effect: Shes helped over 300 neighboring farmers who dont have smartphones, relaying feedback from the tool. It’s helping identify most of the diseases that are affecting them, Ongala said. But advocates say the recent suspension of nearly all U.S. foreign aid may hamper efforts to get these tools into farmers hands. Plant Village had been working with local universities across 10 African countries to provide extension agents and farmers with access to its AI chatbot. USAID had previously pledged $39 million to the project, but with the aid freeze, “some of the networks absolutely fell apart,” McCloskey said. She said Plant Village is now looking for new sources of funding. [Photo: courtesy Plant Village] Building a “path to wealth” with support from AI Though AI can diagnose disease and ward off pests, advocates say that it can also be a powerful tool to train farmers in regenerative practices and connect them with markets. These tools could be particularly potent on a continent with the worlds youngest population and 60% of its uncultivated arable land, said Farmerline CEO and founder Alloysius Attah. Farmerlines app, Darli, responds to questions in 27 different languages, and farmers without smartphones can call or text an AI helpline. Attah said these tools demystify farmingfor farmers and their investors alike. People used to see agriculture as risky, because you just couldnt understand every single component of it, Attah said. Now, AI and financing platforms help farmers anticipate adverse conditions, such as drought, and better preparefor instance, by allowing them to purchase irrigation systems in advance. That, in turn, will help them compete in the global economy, Attah shared. The path to creating wealth is to unleash opportunities, assets, access to information, access to finance, Attah said. The problem has never been farmers finding markets. Its about the farmers being ready to meet the requirements of the market. Nexus Media News is an editorially independent publication of MEDA.
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E-Commerce
Cracks in the relationship between President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, his self-proclaimed “first buddy,” are scaring Tesla shareholders as the two fired salvos at each other in increasingly heated rhetoric on Thursday. Shares fell more than 8% on Thursday on a day otherwise devoid of news for the electric automaker, as traders dumped the stock in heavy trading after Musk stepped up his criticism of the president’s tax bill. Trump fired back, alleging Musk was upset because the bill takes away tax benefits for electric vehicle purchases, while investors feared their souring relationship could hurt Musk’s sprawling business empire. “Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said. “He said the most beautiful things about me. And he hasn’t said bad about me personally. That’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed.” Musk, the world’s richest man and a key figure in the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) cost-cutting plan for several months, has blasted the bill, after he decided to spend less time in the White House and instead focus on his companies. On his social media platform X, Musk has called on Congress members to kill the legislation, calling it a “disgusting abomination.” “It more than defeats all the cost savings achieved by the DOGE team at great personal cost and risk,” Musk, the largest Republican donor in the 2024 election campaign, said on X on Tuesday. Musk’s leadership of DOGE and his alignment with the Trump administration had put off some Tesla buyers. Sales of his EVs slumped in Europe, China, and key U.S. markets like California, even as overall electric vehicle purchases continue to grow. Musk has slowly started to separate himself from the White House in recent weeks, stung in part by the wave of protests against Tesla. “Elon’s politics continue to harm the stock. First he aligned himself with Trump, which upset many potential Democratic buyers. Now he has turned on the Trump administration,” said Tesla shareholder Dennis Dick, chief strategist at Stock Trader Network. Musk’s other businesses, SpaceX and Starlink, dominate their respective markets, but have also come under scrutiny due to Musk’s relationship with Trump. Those two businesses often serve as the default choice for commercial launches and satellite internet deployment, and foreign governments have increasingly looked to Starlink, with regulatory approvals smoothed by Musk’s ties. Tesla shares are down 12% since May 27, roughly coinciding with his decision to pull back from Washington activities. Losses accelerated on Thursday as 100 million shares changed hands, roughly the daily volume over the last 100 days. The stock has been on a roller coaster ever since Musk endorsed Trump in mid-July 2024 in his reelection bid, gaining 169% from that point through mid-December. That was followed by a 54% slide through early April as a “Tesla Takedown” protest intensified. The House of Representatives version of the budget bill proposes largely ending the popular $7,500 EV subsidy by the end of 2025. Tesla and other automakers have relied on incentives for years to drum up demand, but Trump promised during the transition to end the subsidy. Tesla could face a $1.2 billion hit to its annual profit, along with an additional $2 billion setback to regulatory credit sales due to separate Senate legislation targeting California’s EV sales mandates, according to J.P. Morgan analysts. “The budget bill contains bad stuff for Tesla with the end of the EV credits, and just generally his falling out with Trump has risks for Tesla and Elon’s other companies,” said Jed Ellerbroek, portfolio manager at Argent Capital Management. Musk’s public attacks have upset potential Republican Tesla buyers as well, Dick said. One White House official on Wednesday called the Tesla CEO’s moves “infuriating.” The billionaire joined Senate Republican deficit hawks this week to argue that the House bill does not go far enough in reducing spending. Overall, Tesla shares are down 22% this year, including Thursday’s losses. But the company is still the most valuable automaker worldwide by a long shotcarrying a market value of $1 trillion, way above Toyota Motor’s nearly $290 billion. Tesla trades at 140.21 times profit estimates, a steep premium to other Big Tech stocks such as Nvidia. By Akash Sriram and Kanchana Chakravarty, Reuters
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E-Commerce
Indirect carbon emissions from the operations of four of the leading AI-focused tech companiesAmazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Metarose on average by 150% from 2020 to 2023, as they had to use more power for energy-demanding data centers, a United Nations report said on Thursday. The use of artificial intelligence is driving up global indirect emissions because of the vast amounts of energy required to power data centers, the report by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the U.N. agency for digital technologies, said. Indirect emissions include those generated by purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling consumed by a company. Amazon’s operational carbon emissions grew the most, at 182% in 2023, compared with three years before, followed by Microsoft at 155%, Meta at 145%, and Alphabet at 138%, according to the report. The ITU tracked the greenhouse gas emissions of 200 leading digital companies between 2020 and 2023. Meta, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, pointed Reuters to its sustainability report that said it is working to reduce the amount of emissions, energy, and water used to power its data centers. The other companies did not respond immediately to requests for comment. As investment in AI increases, carbon emissions from the top-emitting AI systems are predicted to reach up to 102.6 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, the report stated. The data centers that are needed for AI development could also put pressure on existing energy infrastructure. “The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is driving a sharp rise in global electricity demand, with electricity use by data centers increasing four times faster than the overall rise in electricity consumption,” the report found. It also highlighted that although a growing number of digital companies had set emissions targets, those ambitions had not yet fully translated into actual reductions of emissions. By Olivia Le Poidevin, Reuters
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E-Commerce
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