Improving crop yields with mobile phones
Mobile phones can give key advice to improve the yields of millions of poorer farmers around the world. Michael Kremer, a 2019 Economics Nobel Prize winner tells us more.
Mobile phones are improving lives and yields for millions of farmers around the world. Michael Kremer, a 2019 Economics Nobel Prize winner developed Precision Agriculture for Development (PAD) to give farmers in developing countries advice on how to improve their yields. He and Owen Barder, CEO of PAD, tell Digital Planet how it works.
To reduce failures on surveillance or delivery missions, drones need to be monitored effectively. Karen Willcox at the Oden Institute of the University of Texas in Austin explains how her team has found a way to send back real time data using sensors that create a digital twin of the drone, which can show where fatigue and stress may cause damage during the flight.
Racist and sexist biases within algorithms are causing concern, especially considering they are making many decisions in our lives. Noel Sharkey, Professor of Robotics and AI at the University of Sheffield in the UK, and he thinks it’s time to halt this decision making until it can be properly regulated, or it will have major, real-life effects on all of us.
(Photo: Farmer carrying silage and talking on phone. Credit: Getty Images)
Producer: Rory Galloway
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The voicemails changing farmers' lives
Duration: 03:08
Broadcasts
- Tue 17 Dec 2019 20:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service Online, Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean, UK DAB/Freeview & Europe and the Middle East only
- Tue 17 Dec 2019 21:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service News Internet & East Asia only
- Wed 18 Dec 2019 05:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service Online, UK DAB/Freeview, News Internet & Europe and the Middle East only
- Wed 18 Dec 2019 06:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service Australasia, Americas and the Caribbean & South Asia only
- Wed 18 Dec 2019 07:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service East and Southern Africa & East Asia only
- Wed 18 Dec 2019 11:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service West and Central Africa
- Wed 18 Dec 2019 14:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service Australasia
- Wed 18 Dec 2019 18:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service East and Southern Africa, South Asia & West and Central Africa only
- Sat 21 Dec 2019 02:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service South Asia & East Asia only
- Sat 21 Dec 2019 16:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service News Internet
- Mon 23 Dec 2019 01:32GMT91Èȱ¬ World Service except Australasia, East Asia, News Internet & South Asia
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Digital Planet
Technological and digital news from around the world.