Dealing With The Data Produced By Precision Farming

Erik de Vries, a director at precision farming consultancy Agri Technovation, says the number and diversity of data points generated by precision agriculture technologies require capable central platforms to allow the information to add value to farming businesses.

- Lloyd Phillips

By its nature, a commercial farming business generates substantial quantities of data in the form of hand-written notes, hard and digital copies of documents, and, in the cases of more technologically advanced operations, a stream of data from an array of electronic sensors and user inputs.

A challenge faced by many South African farmers is to efficiently and effectively consolidate, store, analyse and use this often disparate, potentially bewildering, but valuable information to make informed management decisions.

“It doesn’t help that there are already over 100 companies offering an ever-increasing array of technologies and associated products to monitor, measure and facilitate diverse aspects of modern farming businesses.

“These aspects include farm management software, precision agriculture and predictive analytics, sensors, smart irrigation, animal and crop data and analysis, robotics and drones, marketplaces, and now even next-generation farms,” says De Vries.

AGRICULTURE AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS

According to a 2016 report by IoT Analytics, it was estimated that 6% of the Internet of Things (IoT) globally was already being used on farms around the world. Another report, this time published in 2015 by international business research company Business Insider Intelligence (BI Intelligence), estimated that in 2020, 75 million IoT devices would be shipped to farms globally, more than double the 30 million figure for 2015.

Even more astounding is that the same report by BI Intelligence also projected that by 2034, the average farm globally would be generating 4,1 million data points daily, originating from cell phones all the way to combine harvesters. Back in 2008, this figure was estimated to be zero.