Elocust3: An innovative tool for crop pest control
This good practice fact sheet shares the experience and technology behind eLocust3, a highly effective data recording and transmission system for crop pest monitoring. The document highlights the system’s innovative features and the lessons learned from the process of product development. It also sets out to explore how this technology, currently being used with considerable success as a detection and early warning tool for Desert Locusts, could be adapted and replicated to monitor other crops pests, both migratory and sedentary.
The lessons learned, provided in this document are the following (p. 7):
- New technologies offer tremendous advantages, but they must be used and adopted by countries in an effective and coordinated manner.
- The benefits of these technologies come at a price, and it is important to work out from the outset how the cost will be met on a regular and sustainable basis.
- Software programming contractual arrangements should be flexible. Experience shows that delays and unexpected challenges are inevitable, so finite, time-bound contracts are unlikely to work.
- Many companies will offer help and support free of charge to non-profit initiatives such as crop pest management.
- It is advisable to select a well-known, reputable company as a supplier to ensure future hardware repair or replacement.
- For eLocust2, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) worked with a sole partner, Novacom Services, which delivered both the hardware and the software. This has advantages since the entire contract could be outsourced and managed with one partner.