Crickets, birds, weather data combine to guide African farmers

By Munyaradzi Makoni CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - It was in Mbeere, in rural Kenya, where Muthoni Masinde began to pick up on nature's way of signposting shifting weather patterns, as she helped her mother farm their land. Studies in computer science soon took Masinde away from rural life, but she never forgot the value farmers placed on observing the environment and its rhythms to grow their crops. Using her expertise in computer science, Masinde has now developed a to