Farming runs on decisions. Good advice is too far away.
Why we are building Farma: an AI farm assistant that fits in your pocket and keeps working when the network goes down.
The short version
Farmers face urgent questions about crops, animals, money, and weather, and the people who can answer them are often hard to reach. Farma puts answers, farm tools, and a farm dictionary into one mobile app. It learns your farm, works offline where it can, and tells you when it is time to call a professional.
A question that cannot wait
Imagine a farmer in Ogun State on a Tuesday morning. The cassava leaves in her field have turned yellow. Is it a disease, a pest, or a lack of nutrients? She does not know, and each day she waits could cost her part of the harvest.
She has a few choices. She can call a neighbour who may have seen it before. She can go to the input dealer in town, who may or may not know. She can try to reach an extension officer, who may be looking after hundreds of other farms. Or she can wait and hope it passes.
None of these is bad. But none of them is fast, and none of them is sure. Farming punishes delay. A sick crop, an animal that stops eating, or a spray applied just before rain can turn a good season into a poor one.
This same scene plays out on farms across Nigeria and beyond, week after week. It is the reason we are building Farma.
Six gaps we kept seeing
Here are the gaps we think hold farmers back the most.
Experts are hard to reach. Agronomists, vets, and extension officers know a great deal. But there are not enough of them to be in every field, and many farms are far from the nearest one. A farmer may need an answer today and wait a week for a visit. Some never get a visit at all.
Advice is scattered. The answer to one farm question may sit in a book, a video, a WhatsApp group, an input dealer’s shop, and an old farmer’s memory. Some of it agrees and some of it does not. It is hard to know which to trust, and harder to find it when you need it.
The network is not always there. Most apps expect a good connection. Many farms sit where the signal is weak or gone. An app that stops working when the network drops is little help in the field.
Records live in notebooks and in memory. How much did you spend on fertilizer last season? When did you plant the back plot? What did labour cost? Many farms cannot answer these at once, because nothing was written down, or the paper got lost. Without records, it is hard to see what earns money and what does not.
Most tools do not know your farm. A general chatbot can talk about maize. It does not know that you have ten acres in Ogun State, that you also grow cassava, or that your maize is already four weeks old. So you type the same details again and again, and the answers stay general.
Animals are left out. Most farm tools think about crops first. Yet farms and homes keep poultry, cattle, goats, fish, snails, dogs, and cats. When a hen stops laying or a dog looks unwell, the owner has the same problem: who do I ask, and how soon?
What Farma is
Farma is an AI farm assistant for your phone. It brings answers, farm tools, and farm knowledge into one app, so a farmer does not have to chase five sources to make one decision.
It is made for farmers, farm managers, livestock keepers, and farm professionals. It is also made for anyone who keeps animals, from a poultry house to a pet dog.
Farma is not here to replace agronomists, vets, or extension officers. It is a first line of help.
That line matters to us. Farma helps you understand a problem, ask better questions, do the math, keep your records, and know when it is time to call a professional. The expert still makes the final call. Farma gets you ready for a better talk with them, and sooner.
How Farma closes the gaps
Farma has a few main parts. Each one answers one or more of the gaps above.
Ask Farma
Ask Farma is the chat at the heart of the app. You type a question the way you would ask a friend. What fertilizer should I use for maize? How many plantain suckers do I need for two acres? What could cause low egg production in layers?
Then you keep talking. Say you ask about fertilizer for maize, and next you write, what if the maize is already four weeks old? Then, can I mix that with urea? Farma knows these are follow-ups on the same topic. Each topic gets its own conversation, so you can come back to an old one or start a fresh one any time.
Answers come with real headings, bold text, lists, and tables, not messy symbols like ### and **. Long answers stay easy to read on a small phone screen.
Closes these gaps: experts are hard to reach, advice is scattered.
Crop Doctor
When a crop looks wrong, Crop Doctor asks for the facts an agronomist would ask for. Which crop, and at what growth stage? What are the symptoms, and how long have they lasted? Which part of the plant is hit? What have you tried so far? Where is the farm, and how big is it? You can add a photo too.
Farma then replies with what the problem may be, what could be causing it, and what you can do next. It also tells you what else to look for, which helps tell one cause from another, and when it is time to call an agronomist or extension officer.
We keep one promise here. Crop Doctor gives guidance. A photo and a short description are not a confirmed field diagnosis, and the app says so.
Closes this gap: experts are hard to reach.
Animal Care
Farma is not only for crops. Animal Care covers poultry, cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, rabbits, fish, and snails, and also dogs and cats. You can ask about health and warning signs, feed and feeding times, housing and hygiene, breeding and handling, vaccines and parasite control, and how to run a production system.
We added dogs and cats on purpose. It makes Farma useful to a person who has never planted a seed, and it keeps animals at the centre of the app.
When a health problem looks serious, Farma sends you to a vet. It does not act as if an AI answer were a confirmed diagnosis.
Closes these gaps: animals are left out, experts are hard to reach.
My Farm
Tell Farma about your farm once. Save the farm name, the place, the size, the unit you measure in, and the crops you grow. After that you do not need to type, “I have a 10 acre farm in Ogun State growing maize and cassava,” each time you ask something. Farma can use what you saved to give answers that fit your farm.
Closes this gap: most tools do not know your farm.
Farm Management
We want Farma to do more than answer questions. Our plan is to help you run the farm too. That means records for crops, planting, inputs, labour, harvest, expenses, and sales, along with your production history. When it all sits in one place, you can see how the farm is doing and where the money goes.
Closes this gap: records live in notebooks and in memory.
Calculators
Farm math should not need a signal. Farma is built with calculators that run on the phone itself: fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide and insecticide, fungicide, seed rate, plant population, and sprayer calibration.
We are careful with chemicals. The right rate depends on the active ingredient, the formulation, the crop, the pest or disease, the growth stage, and the product label. So Farma will not hand you one rate as if it fits every product. It helps you do the calculation, and it does not pretend to be a prescription.
Closes this gap: the network is not always there.
Weather
Weather is the one part that needs the internet. Farma shows current conditions, temperature, how hot it feels, humidity, chance of rain, wind, and the forecast.
But numbers alone are not enough. We want weather to answer real farm questions. Is it a good day to spray? Will rain wash away the fertilizer? Are conditions right for planting? What weather risks are coming?
Closes this gap: advice is scattered.
Learn
Learn is a farm dictionary that lives on your phone and works offline. It covers agronomy, soil science, plant nutrition, fertilizers, crop protection, irrigation, seeds and propagation, farm machinery, farm business, post harvest, livestock, and general agriculture. Search a word and you get its meaning, a plain explanation, related words, and examples.
Closes these gaps: advice is scattered, the network is not always there.
Built for places where the signal drops
Offline is not an extra in Farma. It is one of the first rules we set. Your farm details, records, dictionary, calculators, saved chats, and saved cases all work with no connection.
The AI itself is the one exception. It runs on a server, so it needs the internet. But that does not mean a question is lost. If you ask with no signal, Farma saves the question on your phone. When the network returns, it sends the question and brings back the answer. You can also resend or delete a saved question yourself.
Try it below. Switch the signal off, ask a question, then switch the signal back on.
Signal is on. Questions go straight to Farma.
No questions yet. Type one above, or tap an example.
A small demo of the idea. It does not connect to the real Farma.
What happens behind the screen
The AI model does not sit inside the app. Your phone talks to a secure Farma server over the internet. The server talks to the AI model, gets the answer, and sends it back to your phone.
- Farma appon your phone
- Farma serversecure and online
- AI modelreads the question
The secret key that opens the AI model stays on the server. It is never stored inside the app on your phone, which keeps it safe. It also means we can improve the AI side of Farma without asking you to install a heavier app. The same server can back Ask Farma, Crop Doctor, and Animal Care, so we can add new AI features later without building a new system each time.
Where we are going next
Farma is still being built. Here is where we want to take it.
Some AI jobs, like a Crop Doctor case with a photo, take longer than a text answer. We plan to let you send a case, close the app, and get a notice when the result is ready. Those cases can then become reports you can save or share, with the farm, the crop, the growth stage, the symptoms, the photo, the assessment, the likely causes, the steps to take, and the date. Animal Care and farm work can get the same.
We also want AI to sit across the whole app, not only in the chat. It can help with records, farm plans, crop and animal health, farm costs, weather, input planning, production choices, farm summaries, and alerts. The more Farma knows about your farms, your crops, your animals, and your past cases, the better it can fit its help to you.
One day, you should be able to open Farma and ask a simple thing: what should I do today? Farma can then use your farm details, the weather, your records, your past cases, and its farm knowledge to help you answer that.
The idea we keep coming back to
Good farm know-how should be easy to reach, useful in the field, fitted to your farm, and there when the network is not. That is all Farma is trying to be: a companion you keep on your phone through the whole farming cycle.
If that sounds useful to you, follow along. We will share more as we build.
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