Telefonica and the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) have launched a smart agriculture pilot in El Salvador as part of the agreement signed in February to develop digitalisation initiatives in Latin America, reports local daily El Mundo. The project is being carried out in San Bartolo, a canton of Guatajiagua in the Morazan department, and involves the installation of a weather station, with two probes and three soil moisture sensors for pepper, cucumber, tomato and papaya crops. The aim is to enable local farmers to make better decisions related to irrigation using the data gathered by the sensors, which is then processed using artificial intelligence algorithms developed and tested by Telefonica.

The pilot is set to be one of many launched by the partners following the three-year framework deal to work together on innovation, digitalisation and data analysis initiatives in the Latin American agricultural sector. The parties committed to collaborating in three specific lines of action, starting with the application of Internet of things (IoT) solutions to agriculture with a view to optimising processes and times, and establishing systems of efficiency in the use of water resources.