Kenya’s greenhouse sends texts when tomatoes need water

Award-winning greenhouses designed by two Kenyan students (Brian Bett and Taita Ng’etich) allow farmers to control temperature, humidity and soil moisture on their mobile phones, The Guardian  UK reports. Built from local material – which drove down costs – the greenhouse is fitted with sensors that monitor temperature, humidity and soil moisture, and sends text […]

Award-winning greenhouses designed by two Kenyan students (Brian Bett and Taita Ng’etich) allow farmers to control temperature, humidity and soil moisture on their mobile phones, The Guardian  UK reports.
Built from local material – which drove down costs – the greenhouse is fitted with sensors that monitor temperature, humidity and soil moisture, and sends text messages to farmers alerting them to any changes they need to make to conditions inside.
The whole unit is run on solar power and the irrigation system can be turned off and on by text message, optimising water use and reducing waste, which is one of the main expenses for farmers. The innovation grew out of the lessons the two students learned from their failed tomato growing business.
“We realised that we had exposed the crops to a lot of risks, including the vagaries of the changing weather,” says Ng’etich, who hopes to earn a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Nairobi in August.
Ng’etich and Bett researched the cost of a greenhouse that would offer a more controlled environment in which to farm, but found the start-up costs prohibitive. A single unit was about $3,500 (£2,370), which was well beyond their budget.
“We investigated to see what was making the structures so expensive and decided to explore how much it would cost if we built up the whole thing on our own.”
The students, whose parents are farmers, borrowed some money from them after drawing up a business plan and put up a greenhouse in their home district of Kericho for about $1,000, using a mix of wood and metal for the construction.
That’s how “Illuminum Greenhouses” was born, although the team soon realised that they needed to go beyond construction. “Anybody can build a greenhouse and so we needed to add value to the product,” he says.