Maximising Agricultural Efficiency and Cost Savings with AyaGrow

Twifo Oil Palm Plantation (TOPP) struggled with inefficient manual processes across their 4,000-hectare farmland, including time-consuming tree census, hazardous terrain mapping, and unreliable yield forecasting. These challenges led to resource wastage, safety risks, and operational inefficiencies. Learn how Aya Data’s AI-powered AyaGrow platform automated these processes, reducing census time by 90% and saving up to $54,500 annually in fertilizer costs.

Twifo Oil Palm Plantation (TOPP) is a leading oil palm grower and processor in Ghana, managing over 4,000 hectares of farmland and committed to agricultural productivity and sustainability. Efficient resource management and worker safety are essential to its operations. In partnership with AyaGrow, an AI-powered crop and field management platform, TOPP has automated key processes to optimize resource allocation, enhance worker safety, and gain actionable insights for improved decision-making.

Challenge

TOPP faced significant operational challenges in three areas:

1. Census Management
   Manual census activities to count trees are time-intensive, prone to error, and lack validation for accuracy. Counting trees across 4,000 hectares requires 1,000 man-days – taking a 20 man-team 50 days to complete. These resources could be better spent on more critical tasks, like pest and disease monitoring. Manual methods also lack insights into uncultivated areas, leading to unnecessary spending on field activities billed on a per-hectare basis, such as fertilizer application, pruning, and spraying.
2. Terrain Analysis
   With varied terrain that includes challenging lowland and highland areas, traditional mapping methods are labor-intensive, unsafe, and require skilled labor. For example, a GIS worker may take an entire day to map a single lowland or waterlogged block, amounting to 100 skilled man-days for a 4,000-hectare area (100 blocks). Due to these constraints, TOPP conducts terrain mapping only every five years, which limits its ability to monitor and address drainage challenges promptly, often resulting in operational disruptions and yield losses from flooding.
3. Yield Forecasting
   Accurate yield forecasts are essential for planning labor, inputs, and logistics. However, current methods lack important data points (e.g. count and blank spots) that may limit the reliability of yield predictions, leading to inefficient planning and potential losses.

Each of these challenges represented opportunities for improvement and cost savings. AyaGrow offered an innovative approach to overcoming these operational hurdles.

Solution

AyaGrow provided an AI-powered solution leveraging drone technology and data analytics to streamline TOPP’s census management, terrain analysis, and yield forecasting. The process involved collecting drone imagery from 1,000 hectares of TOPP’s estate, processing it through AyaGrow’s proprietary AI crop monitoring models, and visualizing the results on an interactive geospatial dashboard.

1. Census Solution

AyaGrow’s Census feature automatically assesses crop count and blank spots with 99.99% accuracy, while generating a unique ID, geolocation, crown diameter, and height for each tree. With AyaGrow, TOPP now benefits from the following:

1. Efficient Resource Allocation: Automating census activities frees skilled workers to focus on essential pest and disease monitoring tasks. A process that previously required 50 days now takes only 5 days with AyaGrow
2. Data-Driven Fertilizer Application: Using drone imagery, AyaGrow distinguishes between cultivated and uncultivated areas at block levels, enabling managers to save resources by excluding uncultivated areas from budget plans. This targeted approach can save approximately $300–$500 per uncultivated hectare in fertilizer costs, which are steadily increasing in price and constitute ~70% of annual expenditure.
3. Workforce Management: By identifying vacant areas, AyaGrow supports optimized workforce management, resulting in significant annual savings. Previously, workers were paid per hectare based on the total area of blocks; now, TOPP can further reduce costs by budgeting only for cultivated areas.

2. Terrain Analysis

AyaGrow’s Terrain Analysis feature provides precise mapping of varied topographies, identifying highland and lowland areas with critical slope data at both block and farm levels. For TOPP, the locations of culverts were also superimposed on the terrain map to assess the effectiveness of their water management systems. With AyaGrow, TOPP can now benefit from the following:

1. Water Management and Worker Safety: By mapping lowland areas prone to flooding, AyaGrow helps TOPP plan effective drainage systems, reducing flood risks and yield losses. Automated mapping also eliminates the need for workers to manually navigate potentially hazardous areas.
2. Automated Slope Monitoring for Compliance: Using slope data, AyaGrow identifies blocks that comply with RSPO standards (i.e., slopes under 25%) and assesses slope risks as high or low, enabling targeted safety measures during daily operations.
3. Long-Term Impact Tracking: With AyaGrow, TOPP can now conduct terrain mapping annually, enhancing the effectiveness of drainage monitoring, enabling proactive water management, and supporting optimized culvert placement.

3.  Yield Forecasting

AyaGrow’s AI-driven yield forecasting solution provides accurate 12-month yield projections, which can be broken down into weekly and daily targets. Our yield model incorporates key variables such as historical yield, rainfall data, actual crop count, and crop age, among others. With AyaGrow, TOPP can now benefit from the following:

1. Operational Efficiency: The forecasting tool enables TOPP to align labor and resources with yield targets, improving scheduling, logistics, and resource optimization.

2. Cost Savings and Revenue Optimization: Reliable yield forecasts reduce harvest variability, lower operational costs, and improve TOPP’s ability to meet contract deadlines and maximize revenue.

Results

With AyaGrow’s AI-driven solutions, TOPP can achieve the following:

1.Cost Savings [Census Solution]

Estimated annual savings of $32,700–$54,500 on fertilizer expenses by optimizing applications only to cultivated areas. Based on 109 hectares of uncultivated area at an average spend of $300 – $500 p/ha.

2. Time Savings and Resource Optimization [Census Solution]

Estimated 90% of time saved on manual activities, allowing skilled labor to be reallocated to more critical functions, such as terrain management and enhanced pest and disease monitoring.

3. Enhanced Worker Safety and Compliance [Terrain Analysis]

Elimination of worker safety risks through automation of manual mapping activities. Improved block-level insights on RSPO compliance to enhance field operations in highland and lowland areas.

4. Mitigate yield losses [Terrain Analysis]

Easily assess and monitor waterlogged areas over time to support water management decisions that prevent flooding and soil erosion, ultimately reducing yield losses.

5. Improved Yield Planning and Revenue Optimization [Yield Forecast]

Accurate 12-month yield forecasts to facilitate structured harvest scheduling, reduced resource wastage, and improved time-to-market for harvested products.

Conclusion

AyaGrow’s AI solutions have delivered significant operational benefits for TOPP, combining cost savings, enhanced safety, and improved productivity. By shifting to drone-based, automated processes, TOPP can optimize its workforce and resources, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.