What is the outlook for the Internet +" concept of hot and smart agriculture?

Seventy percent of the US farms "touch the net"

For thousands of years, the increase in the population has been inseparable from the continuous increase in food production. The World Food Organization predicts that by 2050, there will be about 9 billion people around the world, and the contradiction between the surge in population and limited cultivated land, precious fresh water and other unknown factors (such as climate change) will make the problem of human consumption extremely severe. It is imperative to change the development model of traditional agriculture and improve the output and quality of agricultural products.

What is the outlook for the Internet +" concept of hot and smart agriculture?

In the context of the rapid development of information technology, smart agriculture is expected to be high. Wisdom agriculture is the use of information technology to quantitatively manage agricultural production, rationally allocate resources according to the growth of agricultural products (including food, fruits and meat), and achieve low consumption and environmental protection of agricultural production. In recent years, farmers in developed countries in Europe and America have been active in using the Internet.

In February 2011, the US Department of Agriculture released a report showing that more than 70% of US farms with annual sales of more than $250,000 use the Internet in farm operations, while 41% of smaller farms use the Internet. Mike Smith, a farmer in Fresno, Calif., has a 40-acre small family farm. He posts photos of his farm on Facebook and updates the content of the page every week. Interested customers can email him. contact. Mike Smith said: "The Internet means survival for many small farms. If you only have one organic farm and no website, then no one wants to know you."

But this is just the tip of the iceberg where Internet power is lightly involved in modern agriculture. In the case of more intelligent agriculture, everyone will see that with the help of the Internet and the Internet of Things, more and more farmers have mastered the good opportunity of planting, irrigating and harvesting crops, constantly monitoring the growth status of livestock, and to a large extent Reduce resource waste and gain benefits.

From big agriculture to agriculture

The mainstream academic circles in the country have summarized the characteristics of modern western agriculture as a "big" character, mainly represented by the vast area of ​​cultivated land and the large-scale wide and high-speed combination of agricultural machinery and equipment. This “big” character still dominates the agriculture of developed countries, but the new trend is already very obvious. Farmers use technology such as the Internet of Things to collect data on fields and formulate strategies to intensively cultivate each small piece of land. , extracting high value from each seed, this is "agriculture."

The US Foreign Affairs magazine published a paper published in the May/June issue this year. Because of the high cost of manual testing of soil, most farmers in the United States have changed to take a soil sample every 2.5 acres (about 1.01 hectares) in practice, for every 12.5 in Brazil. Take a sample of acre (about 5.06 hectares). In practice, because the soil in one acre (about 0.4 hectares) sometimes varies greatly, the result of such sparse sampling is that farmers neglect to increase the productivity of some plots and impose unnecessary on other plots. fertilizer. The expert's solution is to develop low-cost sensors to increase the sampling density. For example, the new acidity sensor inserts one into the soil every other meter, automatically reads the data and records its own GPS coordinates. The economic cost of this approach is significantly lower than the manual sampling at the same density. The main problem at the moment is that such sensors are still not widely available on most farms, and more reliable and accurate sensors are still being developed.

Agricultural cloud services cover 130 countries

Strawberry real-time monitoring equipment used by strawberry producer "Norkel Harvest" in Oxstad, California, was developed by the US company ClimateMinder. In the Strawberry Field of the “Norkel Harvest” company, sensors are responsible for measuring salt and moisture in the soil. The Internet of Things uses RFID tags to send data to the “Climate Caretaker” web server. Farmers can visit the website through a specific account to observe the data of the strawberry greenhouse in real time.

Founded in 2005, Climate Watchers promoted its own management system in more than 200 greenhouses in Turkey, and also in poultry farms, tobacco storage facilities and cold storage in Turkey. “Climate Caretaker” was acquired by the US irrigation company “Rainbow” in 2012 and became its IoT system brand.

For centuries, vineyards have been a highlight of the Galician region of Spain, and the wines are world-famous. In the past, during the season of severe climate change, farmers worried that the harvest would be affected, and they often stayed in the vineyard. Today, locals bring IoT technology to traditional grape growing to make smarter choices when accessing environmental data.

The vineyards of the Reyes Baixas region of Galicia introduced the IoT equipment of Libelium (a Spanish company founded in 2006) and built wireless sensors in the park. The network collects data such as ambient temperature, ambient humidity, and foliar humidity, and sends the location and time information provided by the GPS device to the cloud through the 3G network. As long as the gardeners connect to the Internet, they can monitor and adjust the environmental data in the park in a targeted manner. Founded in 2009, Solum is founded by three graduates from Stanford University.

The company's strengths are more accurate sampling analysis of agricultural products, which can better judge the amount of fertilizers and obtain better returns. Using two sets of measuring tools developed by the company, farmers can measure the soil nitrate content in the field by themselves. For soil samples sent by mail, the company has a laboratory for analysis. In 2012, the company received $17 million in investment.

In 2011, FarmLogs, a Silicon Valley company founded in the United States, is a startup that provides agricultural cloud services. The company's business is to allow farmers to upload farming data to the platform through the Internet and mobile mobile application platforms. The company analyzes the data and provides intelligent prediction and optimization for crop rotation. Farmers can learn about agricultural prices, farming costs, profit forecasts and weather through the “farm logos” service. As of last year, 15% of the farms in the United States were “farm logos” customers, with applications in more than 130 countries around the world, including China. The main reason for the company's rapid development is estimated to be related to the free provision of services, as it has been favored by many parties and has so far received $15 million in financing.

Monitor the pig cough with a sensor

In order to produce more and better meat and egg milk, the large amount of data related to animal health in the livestock breeding industry is also the key information necessary for the realization of smart agriculture. Typical monitoring data in this area includes animal temperature, pulse and spatial location, and sensors are critical for monitoring animal reproduction and disease. For example, if a dam is to be born, the sensor will send the information to the Internet, and the network will send it to the feeder's mobile phone via SMS.

The EU attaches great importance to poultry farming and has sponsored several projects in recent years. For example, the PCM project, which was put into operation in 2011, aims to record and monitor pig cough. Compared with manual observation, the project can detect the respiratory diseases of pigs earlier, and facilitate the rapid intervention of veterinarians and early treatment. The French Academy of Agricultural Sciences conducts statistics on cattle's real-time location, body weight, food intake, and methane emissions by installing sensors in the herd to enhance research and analysis of livestock behavior.

Founded in 2011, "Ferminon" is a Croatian startup specializing in livestock farming. CEO Matega Kaupik was born and raised on a farm in Croatia. When his mother was managing the farm, many of the data appeared in the form of a large number of reports. The analysis of the data brought many difficulties to the family, so he had the idea of ​​developing this project when he was at university. Today, the company helps farmers collect this information from all over the farm, allowing farmers to use the tablet to get real-time information on every cow on the farm, including milk production, weight, medical care, health issues, reproduction, etc. Expressed in clear and clear charts, it is easy for farmers to grasp the livestock growth cycle, feed ratio and delivery.

Less than a year after the start of the service of "Falminon", it attracted 450 farms. For farmers with more than 75 cows, each person receives $0.25 per month, and for every farmer with 600 cows per head per head. The monthly fee is 0.45 USD. Larger farms pay for tailored plans. The company received $4.1 million in financing last May and is currently hiring sales force, preparing to transfer its headquarters to the United States, and research and development is still underway in Croatia.

Intelligent irrigation dripping water

The use of agricultural irrigation water is not high, and it exists in many countries and regions around the world. In order to solve this problem, intelligent irrigation can detect the moisture content in the soil through sensors, and control the irrigation system to operate effectively according to the different water absorption rate and demand of different crop roots, so as to achieve the goal of automatic water saving and energy saving.

“CropX” is also a startup from Silicon Valley in the United States. Its main products are hardware for detecting soil parameters, and software is used to display data to farmers to establish a “soil Internet of Things”. The company's hardware products contain three important sensors that collect terrain information, soil structure and water content to determine how much water needs for the soil. “Super Crops” uses mobile application clients to send cloud computing results to farmers, such as irrigation maps and soil moisture status. Farmers can also change the corresponding parameters to calculate the amount of irrigation needed for soil in different areas. .

Currently, Super Crops' products are mainly used in nearly 5,000 acres of farmland in Missouri, Colorado and Kansas, USA. This year, it has just received $9 million in financing. The company has also listed China, India and Oceania as its own targets. market. Google executive Eric Schmidt is very optimistic about this company.

Innovative thinking is not just the startups mentioned above, but ABB, a Swiss-based company based in Zurich, Switzerland, is also involved in the big cake of smart agriculture. ABB promoted the use of the “Neptune” intelligent irrigation system in an important agricultural area of ​​210 square kilometers in southern Madrid, Spain, which saved 12% and 20% of electricity and water use in this agricultural area. The Neptune irrigation system consists of remote terminal devices, data acquisition and monitoring systems, and communications. The Neptune data acquisition and monitoring system not only displays status, alarms, events, reports, and historical data for remote terminal devices. SMS and email communicate, allowing users to access remotely via the Internet.

In addition, from a broad perspective, smart agriculture also includes fisheries.

For example, cold-water fish species such as Atlantic salmon are very sensitive to temperature changes, and continuous, sensitive sensors are essential for controlling water temperature and observing fish behavior. Europe is a leader in the fisheries sector, and China, South Korea, Japan and the United States are also developing very fast.

After that, we may wish to look forward to the prospect of the full integration of the Internet (Internet of Things) with modern agriculture: on the one hand, people enjoy the excellent life brought about by the massive growth of agricultural products, and on the other hand, they are surprised to find that human labor has disappeared in the farmland. Even the traditional peasant profession does not exist - you and a white-collar worker around you are playing happy farm on the mobile phone, you are playing the game, he is playing the real farm, between the fingers, sowing, irrigation and Harvesting can be done easily.

This article refers to the "Foreign Affairs", "Atlantic Monthly", "New York Times", the European Union, ABB company information