GEMS Informatics: Enabling a Data Revolution in Malawian Agriculture

August 13, 2020
A rice paddy in Malawi.

If you’re a fan of mystery novels, you know how important clues are. A fingerprint here, a footprint there, cryptic words scrawled on a fragment of paper — all are key pieces of information that don’t offer solutions when standing alone, but together can unfold a picture of possibilities.

So let’s apply those detective skills to agriculture. Across the landscape, a myriad of data are being collected around the clock by satellites in the sky, sensors on the ground, farm machinery like tractors, and human beings. From weather patterns to soil conditions to crop health — for example, what’s happening with corn at a certain point in its growth cycle — data are being amassed in abundance by public and private organizations. 

But what do we do with all that disparate agricultural data? How do we make it useful to farmers, companies, universities and governments? Like the clues in our mystery story, the data can be assembled and analyzed to inform potential solutions. 

There is a super sleuth that’s unlocking the promises of big data right now — GEMS, an international agroinformatics initiative jointly led by the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resources (CFANS) and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) at the University of Minnesota. GEMS (which stands for Genetics x Environment x Management x Socioeconomics), is the first and only system designed from the very start to support and functionally integrate spatially and temporally distributed genomic, environmental, management and socioeconomic data in a single integrated platform. 

“Nineteenth and 20th century agriculture was spurred by three successive revolutions: mechanical, chemical and biological,” said GEMS Co-Director Philip Pardey. “Today, a 21st century revolution is gaining ground — the data revolution in agriculture. At GEMS, we enable agricultural innovation by turning big (and little), often siloed and sometimes messy data into actionable information.”  

That action can mean tangible benefits for the food and agriculture economy and the environment, in Minnesota and throughout the world. GEMS has partnerships with an array of public and private organizations domestically and internationally, who are working together to grow the GEMS platform and its potential. 

Two men having a discussion near a wall of computers
Making milestones in Malawi

One of the GEMS current efforts is a new project to help smallholder farmers in the African country Malawi — where tobacco production generates much of the country’s foreign exchange earnings — diversify their incomes to build resilience and ease their heavy reliance on the declining tobacco sector. 

Land O’Lakes Venture37, GEMS, Agri-Sciences Faculty at Stellenbosch University and The Malawi University of Science and Technology have forged an innovative partnership to establish the Centre for Agricultural Transformation (CAT). The vision for CAT is to transform Malawian agriculture through demand-driven technologies, partnerships and interventions linking farmers to domestic, regional and international food and agriculture markets. CAT will catalyze transformational experimentation, innovation and entrepreneurship through cutting edge R&D, market research and new business opportunities.

“The food and agriculture sectors in sub-Saharan Africa lack reliable, timely and actionable data,” said Ali Joglekar, an applied spatial economist with GEMS and a leader on the Malawi CAT project. “Without information, all market participants — including input suppliers, producers, purchasers, processors and consumers — are forced to make decisions in the dark. This leads to a lack of investment because risks and opportunities are unseen, weakening the resilience and stability of food systems. And, researchers working on critical improvements to crops, production systems and food value chains find data siloed or difficult to integrate with other datasets.”

Accurate, integrated and timely data — translated into actionable information put into the right hands at the right time — de-risk investment, lead to transformational research and inform smart policy. “This in turn improves communities’ ability to diversify and boost resilience against future shocks, such as weather or a global pandemic,” said Joglekar. 

Like the detective in the story gathers clues, GEMS is constantly collecting data to analyze and turn into action — which is sure to keep us turning the pages and discover what will happen next in agroinformatics.