Agritech is the use of technology and technological innovation to improve the efficiency and output of agriculture.
Put simply it is the application of technology to improve all elements of the farming and growing process.
The application of Agritech can be to grow more food from less space or using less water.
It can be the use of robots to replace manual labour for planting or picking crops.
It can also be the use of big data, machine learning and AI to understand more about the soil or growing conditions to improve yield.
An example of AgriTech in action is a soil sensor to measure moisture content and moisture flow.
We all know that plants need water to grow. But plants get stressed if they have too little water or too much water. So the trick is to get the watering just right.
With the right amount of water, the farmer can achieve an optimum balance between crop growth and water usage.
We know water costs money and is one of the single biggest barriers to traditional agriculture if it is to feed billions of more people.
Placing a smart sensor in the soil can communicate back to the farmer about soil conditions at any one time, which could be hourly, daily or on-demand. The immediate difference is the sensor is sending back the data, saving the farmer time by not requiring them to go out to the field and check every time.
The sensor can also measure many more attributes of the soil at the same time, meaning the farmer can have a more holistic view of the soil quality.
By placing three sensors below each other in the soil, the farmer can identify how water runs through the soil from the top to the root. With these sensors, the farmer can quickly identify how far and how deep the water is percolating through the soil.
If the water collects below the surface but above the root, then it means the roots may not be getting the nutrition.
Equally, if the water is seeping far deeper than the root, it would indicate to the farmer that less water is needed. Less water means less money, which is a good thing.
Now, multiply that group of sensors across a field, across a farm. And then harness all that data into a dashboard. Now the farmer has much more insights into where he needs to water and with how much.
Take that one step further and let the soil sensors feed data into the cloud and you have a regional, national or even global grid of soil data to work from!
Apptom’s state of the art soil sensors, flow meters and valves are embedded in the soil which collects data on crop age, amount of water during earlier sessions, wind speed, the intensity of the sun, humidity, the minerals present and several others; are collected. This data is sent to the powerful backend servers enabled with an AI algorithm that analyses and predicts the amount of water needed by your crops and when it is needed.
Another AgriTech product that is being used is cattle health trackers. These cattle health trackers, tell the exact location of the livestock and protect the farmers from theft and also monitor the health of the livestock. These trackers are in the form of tags that have accelerometers to determine the life cycle and health of the whole herd. Farmers can monitor the herd and raise productivity.
Check out Apptom’s Smart Cattle Health Tracker, which secures and protects livestock from theft, injury and disease. To bring the best of IoT and AI Apptom’s Smart Cattle Health Tracker uses tags enabled with Bluetooth 5.0 which would collect data about the cattle and feed it to our AI algorithm. The algorithm analyses and predicts the health and the life cycle of the cattle from the data and gives valuable insights to the farmers about their livestock.
Now more than ever, the access to and processing of data have never been cheaper or quicker. The evolution of machine learning will help farmers make decisions quicker and better, from more data than ever before.
The evolution of ‘AI’ is also gaining traction in the headlines at least. As machines work to learn from themselves, so we will see even greater innovations come forward.
We can expect to see the number and scale of AgriTech projects rocket over the coming years as the barriers to entry decrease.
Get in touch with us to accelerate your productivity with our AgriTech products!
This post was written by Darshita for Apptom.
Thanks for reading!
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