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SINGAPORE - VIDEOS: How IoT And Machine Learning Are Automating Agriculture
A new generation of farmers is tapping the internet of things and machine learning to operate self-sustaining urban farms with minimal supervision
A New Generation of Farmers Is Tapping The internet of Things And Machine Learning To Operate Self-Sustaining Urban Farms With Minimal Supervision
By Aaron Tan, TechTarget
21 Jul 2021
A new generation of farmers is turning to technologies such as the internet of things (IoT) and machine learning to automate agricultural production, alleviating the need to toil on the land while keeping a watchful eye on their crops.
Joining their ranks is Phoebe Xie, director, and co-founder of Singapore-based agrotechnology startup AbyFarm. Teaming up with technology service provider SPTel, Xie is building a smart hydroponics farm in a greenhouse that uses a plethora of IoT sensors, including video cameras, to keep the farm humming around the clock.
“To run a self-regulating farm at the optimal temperature with optimal water and nutrient supply, and to control the quality and taste of vegetables and fruits, we need IoT sensors,” she said, adding that the farm and its sensors collect and monitor thousands of data points, including humidity and temperature.
With the data and in certain environmental conditions, processes and actions are automatically triggered to protect crops from the elements. For instance, if the temperature or humidity gets too high, fans, water curtains, and roof shades are activated in the greenhouse.
Xie said the smart farm, located at a rooftop carpark in Singapore, is also equipped with sensors that monitor the pH and electrical conductivity levels of water. Among the sensors, which are connected to a Lora low-power wide area network, is a dozer that automatically releases acidic or alkaline nutrients to maintain optimal pH levels.
Whereas the farmers of old had to physically inspect their crops, AbyFarm’s agronomists and farmers can do so remotely using video cameras and image recognition technology to identify crops that might be succumbing to disease.
“If the image recognition finds that a plant is likely to be sick, the farmer will be alerted to go onsite to check how the plant is right now,” said Xie, adding that agronomists will also advise farmers on taking corrective actions to prevent disease or restore the health of their crops.
Like any machine learning system, AbyFarm’s algorithms get smarter over time. Each time a crop is affected by disease, data about the occurrence and corrective action is fed into the system, enabling its algorithms to formulate solutions for other farmers with similar crop issues – without consulting an agronomist.
With that, said Xie, even those who are new to the field can use the system to guide them on treating diseased crops, which can be isolated from other crops to prevent cross-infections.
AbyFarm’s automated farming system, which is hosted on SPTel’s private cloud, can also advise farmers on the best time to transplant their crops after germination and harvest them later for sale, said Xie.
Heng Kwee Tong, vice-president for engineering and customer solutions at SPTel, said the company has built up a software-defined platform to help companies like AbyFarm overcome the challenges of deploying applications such as IoT.
“The common struggle that companies like AbyFarm face with building an IoT solution is that it is quite intensive in terms of ICT infrastructure,” said Heng. “You’ve got to find the radio connectivity like Lora, subscribe to a service provider, and connect your sensors to a sensor collector.
“We make it easy by investing in a platform and because we are a service provider with edge hub assets for deploying radio connectivity, all AbyFarm needs to do is to bring their sensors onboard.”
Going forward, Heng said SPTel is looking to support next-generation video analytics capabilities through edge cloud services that can be used to crunch workloads closer to where they reside, reducing latency.
AbyFarm was one of six companies to win contracts from the Singapore Food Agency last year to build urban farms at nine rooftop carparks in public housing estates across Singapore.
The goal is to collectively produce about 1,600 tonnes of vegetables a year in a bid by the city-state – where less than 1% of the land is used for agriculture – to become more self-sufficient in meeting the nutritional needs of its people.
That could well be achievable with technology that makes farming more efficient, scalable, and less labor-intensive than before. “We are willing to train and educate the next generation in agrotechnology because now you don’t need 10 farmers to take care of one farm,” said Xie. “It’s just looking at the dashboard and, with the alerts, doing what is required.”
Aquaponics AI, A US-Based Aquaponic Technology Research Company, Just Unleashed Their Software Into The Wild
In addition to being the forerunner in Aquaponic technology, they also have invaluable libraries for fish, plants, and diseases, as well as calculators for managing your system
Aquaponics AI, a US-based aquaponic technology research company, just unleashed its software into the wild. It’s the system every aquaponic grower has been waiting for. It has traditionally been difficult to get started in Aquaponics because of the steep learning curve but they are making it easy to get started and maintain a system with features like a project template that gets your system running with recommended maintenance schedules by big players in Aquaponics.
They’re bringing innovative usage of artificial intelligence and big data to Aquaponics for the betterment of the global aquaponics community. Their vision is to unleash your Aquaponic growing powers. You’re the beneficiary of high-quality produce and revenue streams created from your system.
In addition to being the forerunner in Aquaponic technology, they also have invaluable libraries for fish, plants, and diseases, as well as calculators for managing your system.
“We’re about empowering people to be the best aquaponic growers possible. Tech is what gives people the tools to do awesome things.” - Jonathan Reyes, CEO, and Co-founder of Aquaponics AI
You can see the latest developments on their website https://aquaponics.ai alongside invaluable resources and calculators that are available for free.
Tags: Aquaponics, Dashboard, IoT, Sensors, Cloud
Indoor Farming Is Revolutionizing The Food Chain
In an endeavor to ensure citizens’ health, the vertical farming company &ever is committed to sustainably grow pesticides-free green products
Does eating salad really contribute to a healthy lifestyle? Not when 5.6 billion pounds of pesticides are used worldwide to produce fresh greens. According to the World Health Organization, residues from those pesticides are linked to cancer and other serious health problems. In an endeavor to ensure citizens’ health, the vertical farming company &ever is committed to sustainably grow pesticides-free green products.
Vertical farms – the future of agriculture
&ever (formerly Farmers Cut), is a Hamburg-based farming company, which cultivates high-quality plants indoors while saving on natural resources. The farms have a vertical structure and are easily scalable in form and size, which allows them to be run in any climate conditions in any location around the globe.
For &ever, it is all about the freshness and nutritional value of the food. Mark Korzilius, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer of &ever, says that green leaves can lose most of their nutritional value after being washed in chlorine, chilled, packed, stored in warehouses over longer periods of time and then sent on the road for transportation. &ever solves that problem and provides citizens with fresh products by using the so called ‘harvest on demand’ or ‘farm to fork’ model, which leaves the roots intact even when the produce reaches the customer.
The newly opened farm in Kuwait
The first commercial &ever farm is the newly opened vertical indoor farm in Kuwait City. The facility will soon produce fresh salad all-year-round in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert. The farm can grow up to 550 kilos of fresh greens and herbs a day and has faster growth cycles than traditional outdoor farms, which are dependent on the weather conditions.
&ever’s indoor farms are also fostering new cultivation technologies. “We have invented the system ‘dryponics’, which is a unique method of growing salad indoors,” said Dr. Henner Schwarz, Co-CEO of &ever. Did you know that even food labeled as ‘organic’ can contain a lot of different pesticides? &ever’s project engineer in Kuwait Rami Safareni says that their products are “better than organic,” because the company can produce over 250 different types of plants using:
90 percent less water
60 percent less fertilizer
zero pesticides
Thanks to the controlled atmosphere in the farm, the fresh greens don’t require washing and are harvested immediately before they are eaten, ensuring high nutritional quality. To demonstrate the purity of the plants, Korzilius and his team, taste the salad directly from the growing trays. “
It is a common misconception that plants come from the field,” Korzilius explained, pointing out that nowadays plants are mostly grown in greenhouses. Using these growing techniques, &ever is transforming metropolises like Kuwait City into farms and allowing citizens to taste green salad as if they had just harvested it from their own garden.
Farm to Fork
Kuwait’s unique fusion of local flavors and international dishes make it one of the most interesting food scenes worldwide. The first restaurant chain in Kuwait to benefit from the fresh green products will be the local Japanese restaurant Ora, owned by NOX Management. Faisal AlMeshal, Managing Director at NOX, points out that for the first time the restaurants will be supplied locally.
“We used to import all our greens mainly from Europe, but now we have a local solution that is tastier and fresher,” said AlMeshal. “The local supply saves money on logistics, minimizes waste and makes better choices for the planet.”
The technology behind it
Advanced technology provides &ever’s vertical farms with fully digital control over the whole production process. “Our production planning is based entirely on SAP Business Technology Platform, which allows us to optimize production according to the needs and capacities of the farm,” said Dr. Jan-Gerd Frerichs, Chief Technology Officer at &ever.
IoT sensors and edge computing devices are collecting data at several hundred data points throughout the farmhouse – monitoring seeding and germination, as well as crucial parameters such as carbon dioxide levels, temperature, humidity and airflow. To support the project with software implementation and development, &ever chose IBsolution — a trusted SAP strategic partner.
“We have contributed to &ever's goals by delivering innovative solutions on the SAP cloud platform to make their farmhouses being manageable with few people at maximum utilization,” said Loren Heilig, managing director at IBsolution. “It is great to see the first results of our partnership here in Kuwait.”
Data collected from the IoT sensors is stored within SAP’s in-memory database SAP HANA and analyzed with the help of SAP Cloud Platform logistics and production applications.
Building on the success of the Kuwait project, &ever is planning to open more sustainable farms in cities with unfavorable climate conditions throughout Africa and Asia. Nutritional food for millions of people, zero waste and minimizing ecological footprint is what the agricultural company is striving for.
To learn more about &ever, listen to below podcast.
By Nona Kichukova, SAP | Forbes | May 6, 2020
