ShambaIQ Advisory
Most agronomists give you one number for the whole farm. Most GIS consultants give you a map you cannot act on. I do both, so you get a map that tells you what to apply, where — and the reasoning behind it.
Independent advice on decisions that are expensive to get wrong: whether land suits the crop you have in mind, what your soil and water are actually limiting, and how to produce defensible environmental evidence.
MSc agricultural environmental engineering
University of Debrecen, Hungary
Geostatistical soil mapping
493-sample thesis: kriging, IDW, sequential Gaussian simulation
GIS & remote sensing
Spatial analysis of soil and land at farm and county scale
EASA licensed drone pilot (EU)
European Union Aviation Safety Agency — EU airspace
Full background, thesis and coursework on the about page.
Three areas, and most projects touch more than one of them.
Before you buy land or commit to a perennial crop.
Whether a specific piece of land suits the crop you have in mind — soil chemistry and texture, pH, drainage, altitude, rainfall and agro-ecological zone. Most valuable for macadamia, avocado, coffee and mango, where a wrong decision costs three to seven years rather than one season.
What the soil is short of, and exactly what to apply.
pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, organic carbon and texture turned into a fertilizer plan in bags per acre with costs in shillings. On larger holdings this is done block by block rather than as one farm average, so inputs go where they are actually needed.
Sample the right way, then understand the result.
Many farms pay for laboratory analysis they cannot act on, or sample so poorly the result never represented the field. I design the sampling plan — where, how deep, how many composites — and translate the returned figures into an agronomic decision.
Water is the constraint more often than fertilizer.
Irrigation scheduling matched to your soil's water-holding capacity, advice on which system type suits the soil and crop, and assessment of waterlogged or excess-water land. On sandy coastal and dryland soils, uneven moisture causes losses that no amount of fertilizer will fix. This is agronomic advisory; detailed hydraulic design is referred to an irrigation engineer.
For farms and processors with a discharge to manage.
Water quality assessment, waste-water characterisation, and treatment approaches for agricultural and food-processing effluent — coffee pulping, dairy, and produce washing among them.
Turning a disposal problem into a managed process.
Assessment and planning for agricultural and food-industry waste streams, including organic residue recovery and safe handling of hazardous fractions.
The technical evidence behind an assessment.
Baseline data collection, soil and water quality monitoring, environmental measurement, ecotoxicology and environmental risk assessment, and environmental modelling. This is the technical work that sits behind a statutory assessment. I am not NEMA-registered, so a statutory EIA report itself must be filed by a registered expert — see the FAQ.
Contaminated and degraded land.
Assessment and remediation planning for contaminated or degraded soils, including heavy-metal contamination — the subject of my MSc thesis, which mapped 493 samples across seven parameters using kriging and stochastic simulation.
Getting documentation and process audit-ready.
Preparation support for environmental, quality and food-safety management systems (ISO 14001, ISO 9001, ISO 22000 principles) and food chain safety. I prepare organisations for audit; I am not a certification body and do not issue certificates.
How the work gets done. GIS and remote sensing, geostatistical interpolation and satellite imagery analysis. These run through all three areas rather than being sold separately. Drone survey is available in EU airspace under an EASA licence; aerial work in Kenya requires KCAA licensing, which I do not hold, so it is arranged through a licensed local operator.
Tell me what you are deciding
A short conversation about the land, the crop or the project, and what you actually need to know. No charge for this.
You get a scope and a quote
What will be delivered, how, and what it costs, agreed in writing before any work starts.
The work is done
Remotely from data where possible. On site, or through a local partner, where physical survey, sampling or a statutory submission is required.
You receive something you can act on
A written report with the reasoning shown, not just a conclusion, so your agronomist or your team can check the work.
The ShambaIQ soil and fertilizer tool is free for every Kenyan smallholder and will remain so — no unlock fee, no per-report charge, nothing paywalled. Consultancy is for organisations and commercial growers who need something the free tool does not do, and it is part of what pays to keep the tool free.
Tell me the land, the crop or the project and what you need to know. You will get an honest answer on whether the work is worth doing, and a quote before anything starts.
Licensing the ShambaIQ platform rather than hiring an adviser? See partners.