Young Vuwani innovators simplify agriculture

Tsedzuluso Netshimbupfe and Lufuno Mbau are entrepreneurs with a dream. Through their knowledge of agricultural science and modern technology, they aim to fight unemployment through innovation and rural farming development.

The project they have launched aims to empower rural communities and to connect these communities under one banner of rural economic self-sustenance.

“We aim to achieve this through setting and achieving goals that are aligned with our vision,” Netshimbupfe said. “We would also like to foster lively, thriving and growing rural economies through remarkable innovative solutions within the agricultural space.”

The two have designed what they call a Farmru system gadget, which is a control box about the size of an electric meter box. It utilises the power of micro controllers and a programmable logic controller. It has smart sensors that are programmed to collect soil information and other necessary information needed for the Farmru system to execute any of its key functions.

“After the crops have been planted, Farmru will allow smallholder farmers to save water and avoid overwatering, underwatering, and fertiliser leaching,” he said. “This will be possible through our smart automatic watering mechanism on the Farmru system that will trigger watering only when needed, by checking conditions such as soil moisture, temperature, humidity and light.”

They stated that land was readily available for many people in the rural areas, but that farming in rural areas was a challenge for smallholder farmers as they are faced by a myriad of challenges such as limited resources, information, support and mechanisation.

“Therefore, Farmru seeks to address these challenges through allowing smallholder farmers to conduct a real-time soil fertility test before any farming commences. This test will check the PH levels and nutrients in the soil and water solutions,” Mbau said. “We will then generate a report on a screen to show the fertility of the soil, including a recommendation of the crops that will grow optimally on the specific soil.”

They were recently named the second-place winners of the SAB Social Innovation Challenge for 2018. The award came with a business grant funding of R900 000 and a business development support voucher worth R150 000. This was a major boost for the two men's project, Farmru (which takes its name from “rural farming”), which is based at Tshimbupfe village.

“The grant will allow us to develop our commercial product further, and pilot it with identified smallholder farmers from Tshimbupfe and other surrounding villages,” they said. “We aim to use Farmru to assist smallholder farmers by covering at least 200 hectares of land with agricultural activity this year.”

Tsedzuluso Netshimbupfe holds a BCom degree in information systems from the University of Cape Town, and Lufuno Mbau graduated with a BSc in mechanical engineering from Wits University.

Date:15 February 2019

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

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