Solving the nitrogen crisis in a digital cow barn

12

October

2022

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A soil scientist prefers to stand in the mud and a data scientist prefers to sit behind a computer, both sound very different but Claudia Kamphuis got these parties around the same table. In a project for Wageningen University, she and Thomas Been are trying to solve the nitrogen crisis in a digital world. Since agriculture is a major contributor to nitrogen emissions (Hofstede, 2022), they want to focus on this initially. They are planning to do this by developing a digital twin of a farm. But for we continue, what exactly is a digital twin?

According to Kimberly Borden and Anna Herlt (partners in McKinsey’s Operations Practice), a digital twin is a digital representation of a physical object. This object can concern a product, but also an entire office building. What is important is that data from the physical environment of the corresponding product provides real time data to the digital twin. Let me give you an example of a well-known application to make it a little less abstract: Google maps is the earth’s digital twin. Data sources on the earth continuously link real time data (like traffic jams, accidents, weather conditions etc.) to its digital Google maps twin to optimize your traffic route (Borden & Herlt, 2022).

In addition to optimizing your route, an application we are all very grateful for by the way, this technique can thus also be used at the environmental level. By representing a farm in a digital form and continuously combining this with real time data, various scenarios can be examined digitally. This is exactly what Kamphuis and her team are trying to do. For example, by placing sensors in barns that measure nitrogen emission in real time, it is possible to find out, without conducting physical tests, where and with which farming and land management techniques the most results can be achieved (Mailer, 2022; Wageningen University & Research, n.d.; Kloppenburg, Kok & van der Voort, 2021).

We are still at an early stage for developing digital twins for agriculture, but it is a promising technique and when it is fully developed, it can also be used for other organics as water and even diseases (Wageningen University & Research, n.d.).

References

Borden, K., & Herlt, A. (2022, October 10). Digital twins: What could they do for your business? McKinsey & Company. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/operations/our-insights/digital-twins-what-could-they-do-for-your-business

Digital Future Farm. (n.d.). Wageningen University & Research. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://www.wur.nl/formsession-expired-27.htm

Hofstede, S. (2022, October 5). Lijst met 100 grootste ammoniak-uitstoters telt 90 veebedrijven. De Volkskrant. Retrieved October 12, 2022, from https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/lijst-met-100-grootste-ammoniak-uitstoters-telt-90-veebedrijven~bfe80b23/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

Kloppenburg, S., Kok, E. J., & van der Voort, M. (2021, January 1). Digital twins in agri-food : Societal and ethical themes and questions for further research. NJAS: Impact in Agricultural and Life Sciences, 93(1), 98–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/27685241.2021.1989269

Mailer, S. (2022, October 10). Digital Twins – Simulating Agriculture for Climate-Positive Farming and Land Management. Lexology. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=25585a38-417d-41ab-b238-f9767099d6cb

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Potential of IoT & AI in Agriculture

1

October

2022

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Artificial intelligence and Internet of things are transforming the Agricultural industry by providing hope for greater and more reliable yields. In the United States, this technology coupled with genetically modified strains of crops promises an optimistic view to feed an ever-growing population. An idea that is often overlooked with this solution is the loss of crop biodiversity.  

Over 90% of the United States’ main crops are genetically modified varying their nutritional value as well as decreasing the country’s crop biodiversity (Discovery Eye Foundation, 2015) (Calderon, 2021). The world largely looks toward the Gamo indigenous people (Ethiopian tribe) and their relationship with biological systems that have been contributing to the sustainable conservation of biodiversity (Land Income, 2022). Within these communities, they live as one with nature by treating it as part of their environment instead of the capitalist view that perceives land as a resource for short-term financial gain. These age-old systems are receiving increasing attention from the custodian bank to preserve extinct crop strains.  

To learn more about this community watch the following video: https://www.globalonenessproject.org/library/films/thousand-suns 

In the US it is natural that to feed a large population the main goal of farmers is to keep yields as high as possible. This is enabled by having fields filled with the same crop to ensure that the treatment of every acre is the same. This makes the process a lot simpler than growing a variety of crop strains. I like to think that with the disruptive potential of IoT coupled with AI, farmers will have the ability to tend to many crop strains simultaneously. The data received from IoT devices in the field can allow farmers to spot pests or diseases early on, and with the aid of AI, target them with the optimal solution (even autonomously). Hopefully, the simplification of the farming process will allow farmers in developed nations, such as the US, to slow the destruction of arable land and increase crop biodiversity.  

Calderon, I., 2021. Graphic: Nearly all cash crops are genetically engineered now. The Counter. Available at: https://thecounter.org/cash-crops-genetically-engineered-gmo-usda/#:~:text=More%20than%2090%20percent%20of,Midwest%20Center%20for%20Investigative%20Reporting. [Accessed September 23, 2022]. 

Discovery Eye Foundation, 2015. GMO and the Nutritional Content of Food. Discovery Eye. Available at: https://discoveryeye.org/gmo-and-nutritional-content-of-food/ [Accessed September 24, 2022].  

Land Income, 2022. 5 automation technologies that improve agricultural returns. Land Income. Available at: https://landincome.com/blog/5-automation-technologies-that-improve-agricultural-returns [Accessed September 26, 2022]. 

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Smart Farming: How the Internet of Things transform the Agriculture Industry.

26

September

2020

5/5 (2) With the rising population growth, which is expected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050, there is increasingly more pressure on the agriculture industry in order to meet this rising demand (UN, 2019). In addition, environmental challenges, such as unfavorable weather conditions and climate change, only complicate this further. To meet this demand, the agriculture industry is moving towards the use of the Internet of Things (IoT). Agriculture applications of IoT allow the industry to increase operational efficiency, decrease costs, reduce waste as well as improve the quality of their yield (Ravindra, 2020).

With smart farming, real-time data of farming procedures is gathered, processed, and analyzed, to allow large farm owners to be able to make more informed decisions (Kamilaris et al., 2016). With the use of IoT, players in the agriculture industry can monitor their equipment, crops, and livestock. Moreover, the data obtained from sensors placed in the field, allows them to run statistical predictions for their crops and livestock (Meola, 2020). A few IoT-enabled applications in smart farming, such as Precision Farming, Livestock Farming, and Smart Greenhouses will be discussed below.

Precision Farming

Precision farming is an umbrella notion for IoT-based techniques to make farming more controlled and accurate. Such IoT-based techniques make use of items, such as sensors, control systems, robotics, autonomous vehicles, automated hardware, and so on (Sciforce, 2019). Large farm owners can use crop management devices which should be placed in the field to collect data specific for crops. These devices gather information ranging from temperatures to leaf water potential, to overall crop health. By having this visibility at the crop-level, large farm owners are able to effectively prevent any diseases that can harm their yield. Thus, precision farming allows large farm owners to make decisions per square meter or per plant, as opposed to traditional farming where decisions are made at field-level (Sciforce, 2019). Furthermore, with precision farming, large farm owners reduce their environmental footprint as it allows for more efficient irrigation and more precise use of fertilizers and pesticides for crops (Kamilaris et al., 2016).

Livestock Farming

With the use of wireless IoT applications, large farm owners can collect data and monitor the location, well-being, and health of their livestock. With the information collected from the sensors attached to the animals, large farm owners can identify sick cattle. These sick cattle can be separated from the herd, thereby preventing the spread of the disease (Sciforce, 2019). This would save farm owners significant medical costs which they would have occurred had the disease spread to the rest of the herd. Additionally, it reduces labor costs as ranchers can locate their cattle more easily with the help of IoT-based sensors (Ravindra, 2020).

Smart Greenhouses   

Greenhouse farming is a practice of growing crops, vegetables, fruits, etc. in a controlled environment to provide favorable growing conditions and protect the crops, vegetables, fruits, etc. from unfavorable weather and various pests (Hajdu, 2020). Smart greenhouses are designed with the use of IoT so that it intelligently monitors and controls the climate, based on the requirements of the growing crops. Specifically, the IoT sensors in the greenhouse provide information on the light levels, air pressure, humidity, and temperature. These sensors can control the machines to open a window, turn on lights, control a heater, and so on. In addition, with the creation of a cloud server, farm owners can remotely access the system and control the temperatures within the greenhouse. This eliminates the costs of constant manual monitoring as well as optimizing the growth conditions of the crops (Ravindra, 2020).

Smart farming and IoT-driven agriculture have laid the foundations for the Green revolution. The Green revolution is expected to transform the agriculture industry by relying on combinations of new technologies such as IoT, sensors, geo-positioning systems, Big Data, agricultural drones, robotics, and so on. Pesticides and fertilizer use are expected to be minimized while overall efficiency will be maximized. Also, IoT enables better traceability of food, which in turn will lead to increased food safety. Moreover, these technologies help the environment through, for example, more efficient use of water (Sciforce, 2019). Therefore, smart farming is expected to transform the agriculture environment and deliver a more productive and sustainable agricultural production so that by 2050, all 9.6 billion people can be fed in a sustainable way.

 

Bibliography

Hadju, I., 2020. Greenhouse Farming Exceeds Weather Limitations. [online] Agrivi Blog. Available at: <https://blog.agrivi.com/post/greenhouse-farming-exceeds-weather-limitations> [Accessed 26 September 2020].

Kamilaris, A., Gao, F., Prenafeta-Boldu, X. and Ali, M.I. Agri-IoT: A semantic framework for Internet of Things-enabled smart farming applications. [online] 2016 IEEE 3rd World Forum on Internet of Things (WF-IoT). Available at: doi: <10.1109/WF-IoT.2016.7845467> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Meola, A., 2020. Smart Farming In 2020: How Iot Sensors Are Creating A More Efficient Precision Agriculture Industry. [online] Business Insider. Available at: <https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-farming-iot-agriculture?international=true&r=US&IR=T> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Ravindra, S., 2020. Iot Applications In Agriculture. [online] IoT For All. Available at: <https://www.iotforall.com/iot-applications-in-agriculture> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

Sciforce. 2019. Smart Farming, Or The Future Of Agriculture. [online] Available at: <https://medium.com/sciforce/smart-farming-or-the-future-of-agriculture-359f0089df69> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

United Nations. 2020. Growing At A Slower Pace, World Population Is Expected To Reach 9.7 Billion In 2050 And Could Peak At Nearly 11 Billion Around 2100 | UN DESA | United Nations Department Of Economic And Social Affairs. [online] Available at: <https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2019.html> [Accessed 24 September 2020].

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Iron Ox – the future of autonomous farming

14

October

2018

No ratings yet. Last week the first autonomous farm in the USA was unveiled – Iron Ox, located in San Carlos, 20 miles outside of San Francisco. An unusual type of startup for the Silicon Valley,  Iron Ox focuses on the automation of the production of leafy greens (romaine, butterhead, kale and various herbs) through the use of robotics and AI.

Iron Ox is quite a nontraditional farm. Its indoor measures are only 8000 square feet and its main farmer is Angus – a giant, 1,000 pound robot. However, the company’s goal is to grow roughly 26,000 heads of crops each year by adapting a completely different farming process.

Iron Ox uses the hydroponics method of growing plants, which does not require soil, but instead uses mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent. This allows the innovative farm to grow 30 times more produce per acre than a regular farm by arranging crops  in vertical and horizontal stacks. The advantages of the hydroponics method are significant: reduced use of water, sterility and space efficiency. This method, however, requires more manual labor in moving the plants. Here is where Angus’s role comes in – completing the heavy lifting, farming and sensing tasks, while humans are responsible for the more essential roles in the process – planting each seedling and packaging the finished product.

Apart from robot automation, a cloud-based, A.I., called  “The Brain” has been put into place to monitor important metrics, such as nitrogen levels, temperature, and the location of robots. In time, the company plans to increase its functions by incorporating more data and analytics of food-based trends in order to make exact decisions about what crops should be grown and in what quantities.

What is your opinion of this innovative approach to farming?

How do you think the agriculture industry will develop in the future and be affected by technological innovations?

 

Sources:

The Guardian, 2018. Retrieved from:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/08/robot-farm-iron-ox-california

The Verge, 2018. Retrieved from: 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17950502/robot-farm-future-iron-ox-agriculture-automation

 

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From Food chain to Blockchain: how farmers display their dishes digitally

16

September

2018

5/5 (2) “That food product is guilty until innocent”– Frank Yiannas (Walmart’s Vice President) has every reason to be concerned about food safety. Frauds and food origin ambiguity have long been ongoing issues, with scandals ranging from Chinese babies died due to melamine-contaminated milk to insecticide Dutch eggs being recalled throughout Europe.

Not only hurting end consumers, the information asymmetry between consumers and farmers also hurt the other end of the relationship. Authentic farmers with premium products tend to struggle to prove that their products are grown and harvested in an ethical, quality-driven manner.

Now, with the help of blockchain technology, things are about to change.

Improve supply chain tracking with blockchain

Blockchain technology has been stretching its applicability in various industries- including agriculture. By being decentralized and unhackable, blockchain provides a secure, integrated and up-to-date data stream that solves the problem of traceability. Thanks to multiple stakeholders involved in the information stream, product history can be extremely detailed and diverse, ranging from plants’ watering schedule to shipping dates, which can all be accessed immediately using tracking code. Moreover, its decentralized nature prevents the system from data change or security issues, ensuring data transparency for consumers.

“You should see blockchain as a glass box. All chain parties fill it with information. Then it’s locked.”– John Lorist from Frievar

Not just being a plain theory, agriculture-blockchain solutions have been studied and applied worldwide. The US’s leading retailer Walmart has recently announced their Smart Package system in collaboration with IBM.  According to their Vice President Frank Yiannas, this system reduces tracing duration from 6 days to 2 seconds, while also being compatible to autonomous devices. In the European market, another example can be found at Frievar, a Dutch pig farming industry. Anticipating consumers’ demand for transparency in premium pig breeds, the company has been testing the blockchain performance in the Dutch market, with half of the pigs slaughtered per day using blockchain tracking technology

Walmart consumers will soon be able to trace their produces history
Walmart consumers will soon be able to trace their produces’ history. Photo source: Fort York

Not just about tracking

The potential of blockchain does not limit itself to traceability. In fact, insightful, multi-faceted database can be made use of to improve logistics handling, farming techniques, inventory management and broker communications. Despite being a new field, it is promising that blockchain solutions can help farmers increase their production efficiency, and consumers to eat their products care-free.

 

References: 

Alexandre, A. (2018). Walmart Is Ready To Use Blockchain For Its Live Food Business. Retrieved from https://cointelegraph.com/news/walmart-is-ready-to-use-blockchain-for-its-live-food-business.

Gutierrez, C. (2018). Blockchain at Walmart: Tracking Food from Farm to Fork | Altoros. Retrieved from https://www.altoros.com/blog/blockchain-at-walmart-tracking-food-from-farm-to-fork/

Poelsma, B. (2018). Lorist: blockchain gaat varkenshouderij veranderen. Retrieved from https://www.boerderij.nl/Varkenshouderij/Achtergrond/2018/6/Lorist-blockchain-gaat-varkenshouderij-veranderen-296515E/

 

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Technology of the Week – How IOT disrupts Agriculture

22

September

2017

No ratings yet. Hi there!

Having a nice day? Did you have some nice meals? You probably have, as we students love to eat! However, did you know that we need to produce 70% more food by 2050 than we had to produce in 2006. Seems impossible!

Luckily, we’re living in a time of technological advancements. Internet of Things is about sensors in all things that surrounds us. These sensors transmit data back to a common IOT platform and this platform uses common language and advanced analytics to provide you, or your products with valuable information (IBM Think Academy, 2015). What does this have to do with food? Well, you’re about to find out.

IOT is disrupting the agriculture industry, this sounds like a bad thing, but it’s actually very good for us, as hungry students. IOT is making the industry a lot more efficient and has created a whole new industry segment: precision farming!

Precision farming is about managing variations in the field accurately to grow more food using fewer resources and reducing production costs whilst respecting the environment. And this is done by applying Internet of Things.

We used the theory of newly-vulnerable markets to assess the market disruption and found that all three conditions apply: the industry is newly easy to enter because of lower technology costs, it’s attractive to attack as there is a lot of money to make as we need more food in the future, and it’s hard to defend as incumbents are very old-fashion and don’t look further than current strategies.

One interesting example of the use of Internet of Things in agriculture is drones. A drone is an unmanned aircraft or machine, that is also known as an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or automated robot (IoT Agenda, 2017). The cost of production for drones continues to fall drastically, which means that the adoption of drone usage by people and companies is rapidly increasing.

There are many ways drones can increase efficiency in agriculture. They can perform a soil and field analysis. when the field is analyzed, the drones can also do the planting instead of the farmer, which is way faster (MIT Technology Review, 2016). Furthermore, drones can monitor the crop and do a health assessment to increase the efficiency.

By drones taking over these task, the farmer is enabled to make optimal use of resources, increase the profitability and sustainability of production, and reduce environmental impact.

But what will the future of agriculture look like? As you’ve seen, after the implementations of the drone, the farmer is now still actively involved in the whole farming process. We predict that, in the future, drones will operate autonomously. Currently, drones can take-off and land, determine flying patterns and determine flying height autonomously. In the future we predict that drones will become an “unsupervised learning system”. The profession of farming, as we know it now, could possibly disappear. A farmer will need to become more like a system manager than an agriculture know-it-all.  

 

Group 14

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Urban farming: How MIT’s food computers will revolutionize agriculture

22

September

2016

5/5 (1) The world population is growing. Climate is changing. People are moving to the cities. Biodiversity is decreasing. Natural resources are becoming scarcer. Our current agricultural system isn’t designed for that.

With a world population of over 7 billion people and half of us living in the cities, only a small minority is involved in the production of their own food. The rest of us relies on those tasty Kiwis being shipped over from New Zealand or those yummy strawberries coming from South Africa while they’re out of season in Europe. What if we wouldn’t have to ship the New Zealand Kiwis all the way around the world? What if we could produce them right here in the Netherlands?

This is the idea of Caleb Harper, director of the Open Agriculture Initiative at MIT’s Media Lab. He and his team are working on developing an open-source food computer – “a controlled-environment agriculture technology platform that uses robotic systems to control and monitor climate, energy, and plant growth inside of a specialized growing chamber”. These specialized growing chambers look like greenhouses, only with the possibility of having several levels for growing fruits and veggies – one above the other.  All kinds of variables that influence the growth of the individual plant can be changed via a computer including supply of carbon dioxide, humidity and the temperature around the roots.

Like this, you can replicate New Zealand climate in the Netherlands. As a matter of fact, you can also make up your very own climate. You can experiment with all sorts of climate variables to find out under which conditions your plants grow just the way you like them. And these “climate recipes” you can then share with all the other Open Agriculture farmers around the world.

The development of the Food Computer still is in its early stages. Instructions for building a second and improved version of the personal variant of the Food Computer are expected to become available soon. Meanwhile an enthusiastic community of agricultural hackers is sharing their experience with the first version and helping each other bringing this new technology forward.

Please check out Caleb Harper’s amazing TED Talk about the Food Computer.

 

https://www.ted.com/talks/caleb_harper_this_computer_will_grow_your_food_in_the_future?language=en

Also, do visit their website to learn more about building your own Food Computer:
http://openag.media.mit.edu/

What do you think? Would you be interested in building your own Food Computer? Do you agree that this technology will change the way even large food producers will grow our produce?

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