Pinoy startup uses AI to prevent crop damage

By Almira Louise S. Martinez, Reporter

AGRICONNECT PH, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered mobile app being developed by a student, aims to prevent crop loss and damage using farm risk management.

“This is very intuitive and straightforward,” Aldrin “Soj” R. Gamayon, the 22-year-old founder and chief executive officer at AgriConnect PH, told ����ý in an interview. “It makes it more efficient for farmers and agribusinesses to act on things before it’s too late.”

Mr. Gamayon, who comes from a family of farmers, said his internship in Singapore and the challenges that his uncles encountered in the farm inspired him to create an app that could help with crop loss.

After doing his research, the fourth-year Communications Technology Management student from the Ateneo de Manila University noted that most farmers only rely on intuition and the naked eye when faced with production risks such as pests and soil moisture.

While highly respectable, this technique can save only 30% of a crop’s value after seeing visible signs of damage.

“So once you see that the crop has turned yellow, you can only salvage 30%,” he said.

Farm damage caused by El Niño, La Niña, other plant and pest diseases, volcanic eruption and other weather disturbances reached P57.78 billion in 2024, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Mr. Gamayon said AgriConnect could help salvage as much as 90% of the crop because of faster and earlier risk detection.

The app uses smart sensors — crucial components of the Internet of Things —placed on four-corners of the acre of land to detect soil moisture, water level and pest and insect movements.

After gathering data from the sensors, these are uploaded to the AI app to determine the condition of the soil and crops.

The app, which will be launched next year, plans to use a “stoplight system” to help farmers understand the results easily.

Red signifies a serious risk that requires attention within the next 12 to 24 hours; yellow means caution, signaling farmers to be “up on their toes” because pests and weather could destroy the crops; and green stands for good soil and crop health.

“We do acknowledge that farmers and agribusiness owners aren’t really the most technical people,” Mr. Gamayon said. “We’re kind of using a very universalizable concept so that they don’t really need to understand the tech; they just need to know exactly what to do about the information.”

In 2024, AgriConnect won the Red Bull Basement competition, an international program for student innovators. He is also backed by Plug and Play in Silicon Valley, along with Microsoft and Ateneo Blue Nest.

Mr. Gamayon plans to launch the app in 2026 and empower a million farmers by 2030.

“We envision ourselves more as an ally and as a partner of farmers rather than a replacement as others would claim,” he said.