| Precision farming enables farmers to increase production (yield), lower their operational costs and economize their applications of chemicals and fertilizers. PCM focuses on improving crop yield through the analysis of real-time data from a variety of environmental sensors and other data sources located in commercial crop fields or throughout the enterprise.
CHALLENGES / REQUIREMENTS
- Present systems are very costly and typically overuse water and fertilizers due to lack of visibility
- Many plants flourish in a very narrow soil moisture range
- Global population growth is placing pressure on the food supply
- Arable land is decreasing due to climate change
STAKEHOLDERS
- Farm owners
- Irrigation systems providers
- Equipment OEMs
- Cloud platform providers
- Sensor manufacturers
KEY OBJECTIVES
- Optimize the use of fertilizer, pesticides, and water to minimize cost and waste
- Improve production output by precisely managing plots according to hyper-local requirements
TYPICAL SYSTEM CAPABILITIES
- Use of aerial imagery and sensor technologies to collect data on soil humidity, fertilizer and pesticides levels, sunlight, and other meaningful variables
- Send data to a central platform for analysis over a near real-time network
- Automate activities such as watering schedules based on crop conditions
USAGE VIEWPOINT
- Feedback from sensors in farm is given to analytical software, which defines levels of water, pesticides and fertilizers to be provided to the crop
FUNCTIONAL VIEWPOINT
- Sensors: Flow, Chemical
- Network: Low-power Wide Area Network (LPWAN), cellular, mesh
- Standards:
- Augmented Intelligence: Descriptive analytics
- Augmented Behavior: Machine-to-machine (M2M) interfaces |
| Sensor technologies hooked up to a mesh network enable agricultural workers to get a comprehensive 360 degree view of their crops. This is driven by various components which operate in tandem, including high-capacity data processing software. This allows workers to detect any anomalies in the fields, while also assisting in the identification of ideal and less-than-ideal conditions for crops, which leads to the gradual move towards better practices.
In addition, this is all possible without necessitating actually going to conduct this research on the ground. As such, not only is implementing PCM in itself a cost-saving and productivity boosting move, but it also results in increased convenience and ease for the workers. This can be repurposed by cutting operational expenses and slimming the amount of workers, but also by redirecting them to other tasks which could ultimately continue boosting growth.
Benefits: Efficiency increases, Convenience for workers who can conduct research from indoors, Higher quality products
-OPEX Reduction
-Customer Satisfaction Increase
Key vendors: Infosys, BASF, Bayer |
338 Nanjing West Road. Tian'an