While each farmer has their own unique challenges, many struggle with the same questions: How to increase yields? Protect crops from disease? Keep up with skyrocketing costs? Greenhouses are a key part of the solution, but the time required to manage them is constantly increasing – as is the stress on farmers.
Fortunately, there’s an app for that. Our passionate young team at Orisha works with farmers and agronomists to blend time-tested farming techniques with intuitive green technology. Using a mobile phone app and onsite sensors, Orisha fully automates the remote monitoring and control of greenhouse temperatures, humidity and irrigation, all for less than the cost of most monthly cellphone plans.
Today, Orisha helps nearly 200 farmers and their crops thrive by equipping them to control their greenhouse from their smartphones. Many of them have seen their annual yields increase 3 fold.
As a small business committed to growing a more sustainable world, we’re incredibly grateful to our community of farmers for their help in getting the word out about Orisha. Here’s a story from one of them.
“We have more freedom, healthier vegetables, less disease ... and we can stretch our seasons by two to three weeks.” – Jean-Michel, Gauloise Farm
Jean-Michel Guertin and his family have a small 1/3-hectare market garden in central Quebec where they grow about forty organic vegetables for CSA boxes each season. When we first met them, the family had two greenhouses, and managing them was increasingly stressful.
“We constantly had to leave the field or other priority tasks to manually control the greenhouses,” said Jean-Michel. “The mental load was a heavy burden, like the constant fear of forgetting to open or close the panels. If you're not there when the wind picks up, or forget to adjust the panels when the temperature changes, it can have significant consequences on the yield and quality of the vegetables.”
Since they started using Orisha, Jean-Michel and his family have been able to add a third greenhouse without hiring additional staff. They continue to be a key part of our thriving community, for which we are deeply grateful – we hope you might think about joining it too.
Guillaume Lambert is a co-founder of Orisha. He lives and works in Quebec City, but spends much of his time at local farms across the province and beyond.
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EFAO members are eligible for an exclusive 10% discount on the Orisha app system! To learn more, email us at info@orisha.io or give us a call at 1-888-267-4742.