FAO 13/01/2024

Kathmandu – The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, on Saturday paid a visit to a farmers group working with FAO’s Integrated Pest Management (IPM) project in Nepal and attended the launch of the Tele Plant Doctor App under FAO’s Digital Village Initiative (DVI).

The visit to the Mahadevsthan Village Development Committee in the Kavre district saw Qu interact with local potato farmers and witness their adoption of IPM technologies.

Addressing the farmers, the Director-General highlighted the importance of producing “more with less,” especially less pesticides and fertilizers, so as to preserve food safety and help protect the environment.

“Technology can change livelihoods and improve your quality of life,” Qu said. For Nepal, rural development and agrifood systems should play a key role in its journey towards a middle-income economy, he said.

FAO has been training farmers in Nepal to strengthen their pesticide management capacities for several crops, including potato, rice, tomato, chili and cucurbits.

Participant farmers have been benefitting from training and education in ecological based crop production. Farmers were also assisted in establishing sales points in local markets and in conducting advocacy campaigns on the advantages of IPM products.

Nepal’s Highland Potato, in particular, is one of four commodities prioritized by FAO’s Hand-in-Hand Initiative, which supports the implementation of nationally led, ambitious programmes to accelerate agrifood systems transformations by eradicating poverty (SDG1), ending hunger and malnutrition (SDG2), and reducing inequalities (SDG10).

The Director-General then attended the launch of the Tele Plant Doctor App, an AI-based crop pests and diseases detection system that empowers farmers and actors in the agri-food system by providing them with a convenient and accessible platform for the identification of pests and diseases, as well as recommending effective and timely management options.

The system is designed to reduce crop losses, thereby increasing food availability and farmers’ incomes while reducing imports and minimizing the use of agrochemicals, to the benefit of human health, plant health, soil health, animal health, and the overall environment.

During his visit, the Director General also witnessed the maiden flight of the pesticide-spraying drone through the use of the App. The drone can complete the spraying job for the entire village in five hours—a task that used to take three days when done by human hands. This significant improvement greatly enhances the work efficiency of the farmers.

The Tele Plant Doctor app has been devised with support from FAO under the DVI initiative. The primary beneficiaries of this app are smallholder farmers (mainly youth, women, and the marginalized), including semi-commercial and commercial farmers who are seeking plant-protection services. It directly benefits the Government of Nepal by amalgamating qualified human resources working at local, provincial, and federal levels. Other beneficiaries include private sector service-providers and non-governmental organizations.

See: https://www.fao.org/director-general/news/news-article/en/c/1675566/