Nelen & Schuurmans and Engro partner to bring geodata based information services to Pakistan
Nelen & Schuurmans will provide geospatial information services to Engro Fertilizers, improving food production and crop monitoring of thousands of rice and wheat acres in Pakistan. The information service is a spin-off from the successful G4AW Sat4Rice information services that was firstly developed for rice farmers in Vietnam and shall be adapted to the terrain of Pakistani farmland during a one-year development project.
Engro Fertilizer is one of the largest fertilizer manufacturers of the world, with good relationships with the Dutch. Pakistan’s second-largest diary producer and sister company Engro Foods was recently acquired by the Dutch diary multinational Royal FrieslandCampina. Driven by a vision to improve productivity and lifestyle for thousands of farmers across Pakistan, Engro aims to use this innovative information technology to bring this vision to the next level.
Engro Fertilizers Head of Agribusiness Solutions Division, Mohsin Ali Mangi states, “Various stakeholders in the Agri-value chain could benefit by receiving prompt bird-eye views of crop quality over large geographic zones . Engro’s eventual goal in undertaking this project is to help the farmer, the market buyer and the crop advisors in timely decision making and in the coming years lead Pakistan into cutting-edge crop monitoring practices.”
The first step in the partnership is to focus on providing new geospatial information to the work of Engro using digitally collected field data and state-of-the-art satellite imagery. For these images Nelen & Schuurmans is supported by Sarvision, one of their preferred data partners and specialised in interpretation of radar satellite signals.
Director Fons Nelen says, “our Lizard platform technology makes valuable insights into crop performance accessible for multiple actors across Engro’s agricultural value chains. We derive new information by integrating and analysing large amounts of data from a wide range of sources, including satellites, IoT devices and smartphones.”
Within the first year an information chain for monitoring crop conditions and yields will be set up. Implement a scalable and sustainable solution to process field data and satellite information into reports and decision support systems will provide a strong basis for future opportunities. With the partnership a new standard for information technology in agriculture in Pakistan will be set.
The partners have been introduced to each other by the Dutch Embassy in Islamabad.