Breden21/smartfarmerai

AI-powered agricultural advisory for smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe # 🌾 SmartFarmerAI **AI-powered agricultural advisory for smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe** — accessible on any phone via USSD, WhatsApp, and web, built for 2G networks and near-zero data budgets. Built by Info Impact Solutions (Pvt) Ltd in partnership with the **Smallholder Agriculture Cluster Program (SACP)**, funded by IFAD/OPEC and the Government of Zimbabwe. ## The problem Zimbabwe's ~1.7M smallholder farmers face climate variability with limited access to timely, localized agricultural extension advice. Most extension apps assume a smartphone, mobile data, and English literacy — none of which can be assumed for this audience. ## The approach A **3-tier hybrid AI pipeline** that answers farmer questions as cheaply and quickly as possible, escalating only when needed: ``` Farmer question (USSD / WhatsApp / Web) │ ▼ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ TIER 1: Template Match │ ~44 verified templates, │ Local TF-IDF vector search, <50ms, free │ sourced from SACP manuals └───────────────────┬───────────────────────┘ │ no confident match ▼ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ TIER 2: Decision Engine │ District + season + │ Context-aware rules, DB-backed │ weather + crop stage └───────────────────┬───────────────────────┘ │ no matching rule ▼ ┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ TIER 3: LLM Fallback │ Hugging Face free tier │ For genuine edge cases │ └─────────────────────────────────────────┘ ``` See `docs/ARCHITECTURE.md` for the full technical breakdown. ## Quick start ```bash # 1. Install dependencies pip install -r requirements.txt # 2. Configure environment (copy .env.example if present, or create .env with:) # HUGGINGFACE_API_KEY=... (Tier 3 LLM - free tier) # SUPABASE_DB_URL=... (Tier 2 Decision Engine - optional but recommended) # SUPABASE_URL / SUPABASE_ANON_KEY # 3. Run the gateway python gateway.py …