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00:00 Yeofilos Edujemfi lost more than half of his maize farm
00:03 when Ghana faced a major invasion
00:05 of fall armyworm pests five years ago.
00:09 - They eat the floral part of the maize
00:11 even before they get to the maturity stage.
00:15 So the plant wouldn't be able to give the maximum crop
00:20 because the crop is what you get the yield from.
00:23 So most of the plant will go usually,
00:26 but the yield that you expect from the crop
00:29 as big as my hand, you will not get it.
00:32 - Darlington Akogo and his team of engineers
00:35 went across the country to find out from farmers
00:38 about how to identify pests even before they develop
00:42 into bigger threats to crop yields.
00:45 The innovation gives the GPS coordinates
00:47 of where the pests are,
00:49 so farmers can cut the hours spent manually
00:52 in looking for diseases on farms.
00:54 - You want to be able to use technology
00:58 to understand each plant, understand what they want,
01:02 and then provide it for them.
01:03 So that's where the drones and AI system come in.
01:06 We can tell each plant is it diseased or not,
01:09 and then you respond to it accordingly.
01:12 Let's see what the AI system has discovered.
01:16 By these two trees clearly have cereals.
01:18 - Artificial intelligence seemed to be cutting down
01:21 the workload for farmers, and yet in many parts of Africa,
01:25 the rates used on farms remains low.
01:27 At the University of Ghana,
01:29 crop scientists have been working for years
01:31 to understand how to maximize agricultural yields
01:35 and developing new plant breeds that would withstand diseases.
01:39 Rita Akwele-Ajei is a lead researcher here.
01:42 - On average, it takes you between eight to 10 years
01:46 to be able to develop one variety that you can call
01:54 fully developed and ready to be sent out to the market.
01:57 But artificial intelligence helps us
02:00 to shorten the number of years.
02:05 - The move from old forms of farming to the use of AI
02:09 has become even more urgent to sustain food systems
02:12 in many countries already facing food insecurity.