Pest & Disease
Early Warning of Fall Armyworm Outbreaks Through Crowd-Sourced Reports and Climate Signals
N. Achieng, T. Bello, R. Iyer · Farm Better Research Lab
November 2025 · 8 min read
12.6k
Reports analysed
17 days
Lead time
0.81
Alert precision
Abstract
Combining farmer-submitted pest sightings with degree-day accumulation models, we forecast fall armyworm pressure two to three weeks ahead of visible infestation.
Method
18 months of geotagged farmer reports (n = 12,600) were combined with temperature-driven insect development models and land-cover data. Predictions were validated against district scouting surveys.
Findings
- Outbreak alerts issued on average 17 days before scouting confirmation.
- Precision of 0.81 and recall of 0.74 at district level.
- Reporting density below 3 reports per 100 km² materially degraded forecasts.
- Targeted alerts cut blanket pesticide application intent by 28% in surveyed farmers.
Conclusion
Crowd-sourced data is valuable but uneven. Incentivising reports in sparse districts matters more than further model tuning.
Note: this article is an illustrative mock-up created for the Farm Better site and is not a peer-reviewed publication.