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Thabo Momoti a hydroponic farmer that started farming with the help the city of Johannesburg food resilience unit developed a crop diagnostic web app to help emerging farmers.  This ground breaking web app has the potential to simplify farming, by allowing farmers to upload a diseased crop image and the app will give the farmer a report on the disease and the different things a farmer can do in order to remedy that problem. 

The first phase of the web app went live on 4 March 2022 with the aim of introducing farmers to the new app and building relationships with the farmers. Eventually the app will provide farmers with e-commerce opportunities, where farmers will be able to network with other farmers, buy and sell produce and products on the web app.

Thabo is very passionate about farming and started crop production in Dobsonville. With the help of the city of Johannesburg his agribusiness grew and birthed 5ARM-TECH, which is an Agritech startup with the sole mission and aim to simplify farming throughout the life cycle of crop farmers by leveraging different technologies. 

“What makes 5ARM-Tech innovative, is that currently farmers in South Africa need expert plant diagnosticians/ Agronomist that are expensive to diagnose their crop diseases and then they have to travel long distances to get remedies from retailers that sell farming inputs at a mark-up, which is expensive for smallholder and rural farmers”, said Thabo. 

5ARM-TECH solves these problems for smallholder farmers by giving them expert information. This is innovative because it simplifies the farming experience for smallholder farmers and saves costs. Automation and simplification of farming will make it an attractive career and make current farmers more effective.

Farmers can access the crop diagnostic web app on www.5arm.tech

Issued by the City of Joburg