Precision Farming in Agricultural Practices

Developing a mobile application that connects to in-field data-gathering sensors to make precision farming technologies and solutions accessible to end-users.

Concept

Precision farming technologies have an underutilised economic and ecological potential for farmers, especially with regards fertilising and spraying. The main goal of the Flagship Innovation Experiment (FIE) is to propagate site-specific management methods in agricultural practice, with a focus on small-scale and heterogeneous farms. However, besides the high costs for technical equipment, the adoption of precision farming models for a wide range of farmers also depends on information dissemination and education, carried out in an understandable manner.

Implementation

At the heart of this FIE is the development of a mobile application that centralises agronomic aspects of small-scale precision farming. Hence, various in-field sensors provide the information which is subsequently integrated into the underlying software. The gathered data includes field mapping based on the implemented sensors alongside an evaluation of different variants for fertiliser application, subject to factors such as climate. Ultimately, to make their models and solutions accessible for a wide range of farmers, this FIE focuses on usability, stability, and scalability on an international level.

 

Lessons learnt:

This FIE has learnt several lessons. Interfaces to external clouds and platforms are ranked depending on the importance and benefit. A full automatic use-case was demonstrated with the John Deer platform. Standards like the ISOXML and a manual data transfer complete the user requirements.