TERRACLIM
SA Developed Climate Tool to Drive Agri Insight
Empowering long and short-term decision making at regional, farm and vineyard level, TerraClim is the latest agritech invention to come from the University of Stellenbosch. By utilising comprehensive research and data in a neatly packaged system, farmers can now understand better than ever how climate is impacting their land and potential. Founder Dr Tara Southey tells Enterprise Africa more about the development and promise for this exciting SA innovation.
By 2050, a further 17% of the world’s agricultural productivity could be lost as a result of climate change. In the past 40 years, a third of all arable land has been lost to erosion or pollution. Wildfires, tornadoes, floods, and drought are increasingly common, and they decimate soil and its growing potential. These phenomena are not new. The problem has been building since the 70s when the UN Scientific Conference raised concerns over human activity impacting the environment.
At the same time, the demand for food from a growing population is booming (some predict demand could rise by 90% by 2050). For farmers, the pressure is on. Land must be managed effectively, and crops must be cared for with precision. The time of the farmer’s sixth sense is over, and decision making must be informed and based on viable data with provable results.
But in South Africa, the data and insight for the agricultural community is sparse. Technology has not been used to its full potential to aid in food production, reduce waste, and drive productivity.
TerraClim, a new company backed by the University of Stellenbosch, hopes to change this and is building out a system that can provide farmers with precise data about their land and climate in order to mitigate against impacts of climate change.
A world-leading wine industry, globally recognised maize, internationally in demand citrus, avocados, nuts, berries, and deciduous fruits, and a basket of vegetable exports that ship to markets in every corner of the planet make for an agricultural industry worth more than $12 billion, 10% of GDP, supporting some 900,000 jobs.
EUREKA!
Innovation is rife in the sector, from the use of solar energy and ingenious watering techniques to employing ducks and spiders as natural pest controllers. But using big data has, to date, not been possible in a meaningful way because the data did not exist. There was simply not enough of a tech rollout to collect useful information at scale.
TerraClim, in partnership with a number of high-profile organisations, has created a climate database that gives farmers and growers more knowledge and information than ever before; accurate and precise across differing microclimates on the same site. It’s the power of technology and data, combined with the experience of the farmer, to create highly effective plans for the future of the land while addressing food security for SA and beyond.
Dr Tara Southey is a founder of TerraClim. She tells Enterprise Africa that the idea for the business comes from the industry itself, with a clear gap in the market for climate intelligence.
“I am a viticulturist by training. I started to become more interested in climate dynamics and climate change, and in 2018 we started a survey with growers, researchers, and consultants to identify what is needed in the context of climate change. Every person we interfaced with said access to climate data and access to terrain information which, in South Africa, was not available for many reasons.”
TerraClim was founded as an extension of the University of Stellenbosch, bringing together vast research and development in a way that empowers decision making around climate change.
“We stared a flagship wine industry project in 2019,” says Southey of the EUREKA Climate Smart Agriculture Project which saw 200 weather stations positioned across the Western Cape as a result of funding from Winetech, a leading South African wine industry research body.
“Through 2019, 2020 and 2021, it was about building a centralised climate database to better quantify climate dynamics in the Western Cape. It took a lot of relationship and partnership building with the private sector and weather station custodians, and then ingesting all of that info into a robust centralised climate database and trying to identify how to provide additional information.”
The base of the concept is integrating various data resources and displaying information in a way that allows for detailed analysis of climate and terrain. Historic data can help to predict future patterns, and a unique suitability tool can help farmers to decide which crops to plant, where, and why. Figures for temperature, rainfall, solar radiation, aspect, elevation, curvature, and much more are now quickly accessible in an online tool that is very user friendly and easy to understand.
“Previously, you had one weather station representing a farm, or 10 weather stations representing a region, we now have a new temperature value every 40m that can help to quantify your environment at hourly resolution. In the Western Cape, no database of this nature exists and looking at climate from a spatial perspective is novel,” Southey says of the progress that has been made over the past few years.
“We take all the temperature layers at hourly resolution, over all seasons, 365 days a year, to create a massive database. We aggregate all this data to bioclimatic crop specific indices, like winter chill maps, heat index maps, frost index maps and more, and we start to identify where the areas are that are vulnerable to the extremities of temperate change.”
VERY VALUABLE
The advantages of the new tool are already being realised in the Western Cape as vineyards decide on sustainable cultivars that will form the base of their blends in the future. Stephan Joubert, Head Winemaker at DGB said: “For the industry, this will be very valuable going forward – to plant the right varietals in the right regions, to make informed decisions, to take the industry to the next level.”
Explaining why data is and will be so important in the decision-making processes of farmers and growers, Southey highlights the vast differences from one region to the next across South Africa, and the very different ways in which each area responds to changes in climate. The company’s suitability tool also demonstrates how different crops respond to climatic alterations.
“What we’ve seen through the Western Cape is that no agricultural unit is responding the same to climate change and so the question about climate vulnerability came about,” she says.
“South Africa is being most impacted by climate change as no season is the same. In other countries, there is consistent warming and globally it’s getting hotter and hotter. Africa is getting hotter, but South Africa is having extremes – extreme floods, extreme droughts, extreme temperatures, and we want to understand where we are most vulnerable in those extremities.”
Predictions are that South Africa will get warmer summer conditions with some even predicting the region to be as much as 3.4oC warmer by the end of the century. A steady upward trend in mean temperatures is undeniable in South Africa, and 2022 saw the hottest ever recorded temperature in Cape Town (45.2oC) when the city was the hottest place in Africa.
Plants generate a response to changes in weather profile and are a key indicator of severity. Studying plants and understanding reactions gives insight that was previously unavailable. “It is a calculator and a biological system that provides a reaction and response that we do not always see,” says Southey. “In my research, and globally in the wine making space, we see that more hot hours in the summer months is resulting in our flowering and season getting earlier. To identify those windows of change, and how we can respond, is now very important.”
TerraClim has a centralised climate database that it integrates with special methodologies, taking points and surface temperatures as well as using high-resolution digital elevation models. This offers an idea about the aspect, slope, and solar radiation on a farm, all of which is directly linked to temperature change.
“Seeing where the most change has occurred in the past five years gives you some understanding of where you can respond as a farmer to allow economic sustainably and financial security for the country,” states Southey.
This is the core use case of TerraClim and how it will grow in the future. By making data digestible and powering changes in processes through real intelligence, the company’s tools address long-term issues that arise thanks to climate change. “Our big focus in climate resilience and food security, and using a data driven approach to answer those questions. At the beginning, the whole point was to display data to the grower so that they can start asking different questions. It’s about taking decision making to the next level,” confirms Southey.
Executive Manager at Winetech, Gerard Martin, has seen the benefits first hand. “The benefit of the TerraClim tool is that it empowers not only producers, but also our research community to make better decisions on how to mitigate climate change,” he says.
The TerraClim suitability tool integrates 44 environmental parameters under climate, soil, and terrain, and build a profile on the best conditions for certain crops. Whether its macadamia nuts, cabbages, avocados, or different wine grapes, the foundational research and knowledge built into the suitability tool also encompasses climate change scenarios to make for a robust planning asset.
“A lot of farmers want to adapt and want to do something different but they have no knowledge on how to do that,” says Southey. “Usually the frame of reference is who is farming around me, what do they do, and what is working. It’s a scary space watching farmers make agricultural decisions and shift into a new space and then having no crop because they plant in the wrong place.
“If you plant the right thing in the right place and you know that there is a market for your product at the end of the day, that is the first step. But climate impacts every crop differently, every year. Macadamia nuts might not have enough fatty acids, or the grape in the wine industry might not have enough cell division and therefore lower production. Getting sectors to work together, and getting farmers to diversify their risk by offsetting what they plant is important. We want to encourage people to take advantage of their environmental parameters.”
SCALE FOR FOOD SECURITY
For Southey, founder and primary researcher, expansion of TerraClim is very achievable. By building strong partnerships similar to those the company enjoys in the Western Cape, further coverage will only assist more farmers and growers to make informed decisions. With 98% of the Western Cape’s wine growing territory covered, expanding across the country is only a matter of time, and international exposure will follow.
“60% of global uncultivated land lays in Africa. Food security for the future lays in Africa. For us as South Africa, there is a drive to understand what works where so that we can position ourselves as a leader on the continent to help leverage food security,” explains Southey.
Further products will emerge as more data becomes available. TerraClim hopes to provide water footprint data, regenerative agriculture advice, soil selection abilities, traceability, and evapotranspiration modelling, giving those who need it the ultimate planning product portfolio for agriculture operations.
“We want to be able to recommend to farmers how they can be more economic and environmentally sustainable. If we can do this, we will scale the product market traction to another level.
“We want to scale the suitability tool to look at more crop types and allow growers to have more options for diversification. All of the products we have created have been developed with scalability in mind. To run our methodology in another country with a good weather station network is very easy to do,” claims Southey.
Climate change remains a painful topic for many farmers and growers, especially those that have already seen the negative impacts from extreme heat or flood. Crop failures in 2022 left many facing food insecurity across southern Africa, and efforts are underway form national governments and the United Nations World Food Programme to provide appropriate response.
If TerraClim can continue to prove its worth, suitable crops can be planted now to mitigate negativity in coming years and decades.
“In 10 years’ time, I want to have a very good understanding of climate vulnerability for farmers and regions, and have positioned crop types within those environments. Thriving agriculture is what makes the country and continent sustainable,” states Southey. “It’s all about giving fresh options for those areas that are almost depressed by climate change. It is a depressing subject – it’s terrible how it is impacting us, but we can take advantage of the changes by shifting our mindset, planting something different, and being more competitive in the stories we tell.”
She is keen on the idea of perfecting production of prized wine grapes, like Sauvignon Blanc, and having a transparent process that results in the world paying a premium for a faultless but unique product from South Africa.
“I want a tool that is robust and dynamic and allows farmers, researchers, consultants, and investors to engage with information that allow for more futuristic decision making. And when it comes back to banking and finance and insurance, these systems that are fearful of one another in their silos, end up working together for the good of the country and for the good of food security globally.”
Perhaps, instead of worry and concern about losing significant portions of productive land by 2050, through the use of technology like TerraClim, the industry can begin to consider threats as opportunities. Changes in processes are obviously required, and those that make smart decisions are those that will benefit. The unique assets of TerraClim – its insightful database, climate profile at an hourly resolution, and its valuable suitability tool – allow users to explore, analyse, and act.
As the swallows and swans fly south to north in September, farmers in rural Tanzania expect short rains. In Cape Town, farmers with access to advanced weather stations and TerraClim software are already planting climate resilient vines with alternative crops between rows. The difference in smart agriculture is obvious, and with TerraClim demonstrating how much is possible, the number of projects and amount of information will grow.