How Local weather-resilient Greenhouses Help Farmers Overcome Unpredictable Local weather

Ghana loses about $1.9 billion yearly to post-harvest losses. Farmers, who type the backbone of the agricultural sector, utilizing over 30% of the inhabitants and contributing roughly 20% to nationwide GDP, lose as a lot as half their harvests to erratic rainfall, outdated farming methods, and poor storage or market entry. On the same time, illegal small-scale mining, commonly known as galamsey, has polluted numerous Ghana’s freshwater. Some estimates counsel that about 60% of the nation’s rivers and streams are literally contaminated, and tons of of hectares of farmland have grow to be unfit for cultivation.

In opposition to this backdrop, Anaporka Adazabra launched Farm.io Restricted in 2020 with what she calls “Farms of the Future”: climate-smart greenhouses built-in with precision farming devices, agronomist help, market linkages, and versatile financing.

“Farm.io isn’t practically providing devices; it’s about establishing a full system that connects farmers from manufacturing to market whereas making them further resilient to native climate change,” Adazabra talked about.

Her work earned her the Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award in 2025, drawing worldwide consideration to a model that’s quietly altering how Ghana’s smallholder farmers produce and promote meals.

Smart greenhouses for year-round manufacturing

Farm.io’s modular greenhouses are designed to resist Ghana’s quite a few native climate circumstances. Constructed from recycled however sturdy provides, she says the buildings remaining over 15 years and defend crops from heat stress, erratic rainfall, and pests.

“In open farming, yields are extraordinarily vulnerable to erratic rainfall, pests, and heat stress,” Adazabra explains. “With greenhouses, farmers can develop year-round in managed environments, optimise water use, reduce pest stress, and improve productiveness as a lot as 5 cases as compared with open fields.”

She offers that each unit comes with drip irrigation for surroundings pleasant water use, air stream controls for temperature and humidity administration, and defending mesh to minimise pest entry. Newer fashions embrace digital sensors associated to Farm.io’s USSD platform, allowing farmers to look at circumstances and procure tailored advice.

Recognising that enterprise greenhouse methods will likely be expensive, Farm.io designed modular houses using domestically sourced provides. Counting on measurement, a Farm.io greenhouse begins at spherical $500 for compact yard fashions and scales as a lot as group buildings costing just some thousand {{dollars}}.

Adazabra says that up to now, Farm.io has constructed and deployed over 200 modular greenhouses all through Ghana, from yard kits for metropolis growers to larger enterprise objects for cooperatives. The company has achieved better than 100 duties, with most prospects reporting common yields all 12 months lengthy.

“As an alternative of harvesting merely just a few instances a 12 months, farmers can now receive a variety of manufacturing cycles and supply greens much like tomatoes, peppers, and leafy greens persistently to the market,” she says.

versatile financing fashions. Adazabra describes a pay-as-you-grow scheme which allows farmers to repay the value of greenhouses or inputs step-by-step from harvest proceeds moderately than upfront.

“For larger objects, we offer lease-to-own fashions that unfold funds all through a variety of seasons until farmers or cooperatives completely private the infrastructure,” Adazabra explains. “We’re moreover exploring partnerships with financial institutions and impression merchants to unlock low-interest credit score rating and blended finance.”

A digital farm supervisor in every pocket

Previous bodily infrastructure, Farm.io extends its attain by the use of a digital platform, on the market as a smartphone app and by the use of USSD for basic telephones. In step with Adazabra, the platform acts as a farm supervisor, offering real-time steering all by the farming cycle.

“By the app, and even the USSD mannequin for farmers with out smartphones, they’ll entry climate-smart advice, get alerts on irrigation or pest administration, monitor crop improvement, and request inputs or suppliers immediately from Farm.io,” Adazabra explains. “It moreover connects them to patrons prematurely, reducing postharvest losses.”

For areas with restricted connectivity, the USSD service ensures farmers can nonetheless request suppliers, confirm crop schedules, and procure advisory messages with out info.

“We constructed lightweight offline efficiency that retailers updates and syncs every time there’s an indication,” she offers. “By combining USSD, SMS alerts, and low-data design, we be sure that no farmer is omitted, regardless of their gadget or location.”

To ensure adoption, Farm.io’s space brokers current hands-on demonstrations to educate farmers on how you should utilize the devices.

To connect farmers to market, Farm.io operates a twin market method, connecting farmers immediately with aggregators, retailers, and institutional patrons who resolve to purchases prematurely, and via its private on-line retailer the place farmers can promote on to customers. Every harvest goes by the use of standardised sorting, packaging, and prime quality checks to fulfill every native and export necessities.

Recognition and the journey ahead

Being named a Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Awardee has been transformative for Farm.io.

“It gave us worldwide publicity and credibility, opening doorways to companions, merchants, and policymakers who might on no account have found us in some other case,” Adazabra says, significantly useful in a sector merchants have beforehand thought-about too harmful to spend cash on. 

The award moreover strengthened her platform as a woman entrepreneur in agriculture, connecting her to a group of mates and mentors. Since then, Farm.io has secured new partnerships to broaden greenhouse adoption and strengthen farmer financing pipelines.

Operationally, logistics keep the toughest downside. “Getting inputs, greenhouses, and produce to and from distant farms is sophisticated and expensive,” she says. Farm.io is addressing this by the use of larger route planning, aggregation hubs, and native partnerships.

Adazabra’s ambitions lengthen previous Ghana. Over the next 5 years, she envisions Farm.io as Africa’s fundamental platform for climate-smart farming.

“Which suggests scaling our modular greenhouses into every district, so farmers, whether or not or not in rural villages or metropolis backyards, can produce persistently all 12 months spherical,” she says. “It moreover means growing our SuperApp proper right into a one-stop ecosystem for teaching, financing, inputs, and markets.”

At scale, she believes Farm.io might help tens of tens of millions of farmers feed rising cities and even attain export markets, shifting from subsistence to industrial ranges of producing. 

“Our best achievement has been proving that smallholder farmers can thrive when know-how meets agriculture,” Adazabra says. “We’ve constructed tons of of greenhouses, onboarded farmers onto our SuperApp and USSD platforms, and confirmed that productiveness and incomes can rise significantly.”