Connectivity. News, opinions and innovations in Precision Agriculture

Transcription

1 News, opinions and innovations in Precision Agriculture Welcome to Large agricultural businesses are determining their precision agriculture strategies right now. Just like you are! And while some businesses are further ahead than others, there is one question that everyone is wrestling with: How do I get farmers or growers to willingly send me their farm data so that I can analyse it to supply them with customized instructions for using our products to increase their yields? We think we have the answer, and we would like to invite you to the F4F and SAP Precision Agriculture Summit on February 4 at the SAP Offices in Palo Alto, CA, or February 24 in Walldorf, Germany to discuss this topic. There is no charge for attendance but spaces are limited at each event. F4F is the most successful international specialist provider of integration solutions in the agricultural supply chain and is already integrated with most of the world s biggest agricultural businesses. SAP is the most successful ERP systems provider to the world s biggest agricultural businesses and is the leading vendor for real-time database platforms and predictive analytics to manage Big for precision agriculture. Together, F4F and SAP believe that we have a solution that will allow you to differentiate your company from your competitors in the new world of precision farming. Please register your interest in attending either the EU event or the North American event by clicking on the link below. We really look forward to seeing you there. Register... This precision agriculture newsletter from F4F and SAP seeks to provide you with thought provoking articles in the run up to the two events in February. We hope you enjoy reading them. Nick Evans F4F Managing Director Don Mahoney SAP Vice President & Global Head of Chemicals News Index F4F and SAP - an exciting new partnership that will transform real-time data analysis Are you part of the new movement in Precision Ag? What about the weather? driven field based advice - A farmer s view point

2 The so what of the F4F and SAP partnership As announced earlier this summer SAP has partnered with F4F. This partnership was the culmination of more than a decade of collaboration between SAP and F4F aimed at extending the benefits of F4F s agriculture and animal health expertise in real time supply-chain and precision analytics. Among the key strengths each party brings to the partnership are: l SAP s broad adoption within the agricultural and animal health markets l The in-memory computing capabilities of SAP HANA l F4F cloud based integration products/services and their extensive knowledge of the agriculture industry What then? Since the announcement, F4F and SAP have been systematically collaborating with customers throughout the USA and Europe in the Seed, Fertiliser, Crop Protection, Animal Health, Feed and Machinery sectors. At the centre of this collaboration is the need for an independent agricultural platform to enable integration with all parts of the supply chain in order to deliver; precision farming solutions, track and trace, exchange of data from farm machinery, seed processor treatment requirements, delivery of advice and prescriptions to farmers, agronomists, and retailers. The combination of F4F s agricultural expertise and its open integration platform combined with SAP s market presence provides a unique opportunity for business and supply-chain transformation, centred on giving farmers and the industry the tools to increase productivity and profitability. What is the vision? Our vision is to provide a neutral, independent solution where farmers can safely share data with a variety of interested parties. Farm input providers can then use SAP HANA to analyze the data and provide expert advice that helps the farmer improve yields and operate more efficiently. The diagram below represents that vision. F4F/SAP Agri Business Hub FARMER PORTAL PRECISION FARMING LEGACY APPS Farmer Systems Laboratories Farm Partner Machinery Trials Weather Modelling Aggregation/ Federation Permissions Analysis Storage My Company Custom Prescription Algorithms Predictive Analytics Market Prices F4F AGRICULTURE HUB ON SAP HANA PRECISION FARMING ENGINE ON SAP HANA COLLECT CONNECT PRESCRIBE DELIVER continued...

3 Today, the F4F network supports exchanges of agricultural data to enable a number of processes, from provision of custom fertilizer application instructions, to track and trace of livestock from farm to store, to routing and filing of required documents like seed declarations and grain passports. These examples of farmer/agribusiness collaboration thorough the network validate the larger concept, and make F4F s platform a great framework to build on. The deployment of SAP HANA in the F4F landscape will enable the network to grow in scope, both in terms of the number of business partners supported and the types/volumes of agricultural data exchanged. Do I need SAP or SAP HANA to connect? No, this is an open, neutral platform. While F4F has chosen to use SAP HANA to extend its services, customers who connect and subscribe to these services are not required to use HANA. The farmers, data providers, and agribusiness partners who participate in the Hub can use any back office software they choose. In the diagram above a customer could use their own SAP and SAP HANA or some other back-office systems to drive their analytics say, for example, the proprietary algorithms that look at soil characteristics, hydrology data, weather forecasts, and seed traits to predict exactly what type of corn will produce the highest yield in a specific acre of a specific field. Our view is that SAP HANA is a platform particularly well suited for such data aggregation, modelling, and predictive analysis but it is not a requirement for participation in the Agriculture Hub. What is the Farmer Precision Portal? security and ownership is a key issue, hence one of the main functions of the Farmer Portal is to enable the grower to provide permissions and access to the Farm data they are happy to share. In addition while the F4F network enables farmers to upload data about their operations, and agribusiness companies to send data to farmers, it does not store or own this data. For over a decade F4F has securely and safely managed confidential contract, financial, inventory, quality and yield data on behalf of its customers. F4F s role is that of platform manager where its focus is on making integration easy and enabling the industry to take advantage of the implementation of open standards with market knowledge. Without permission, no data is aggregated or shared with other business partners on the network. What next? F4F and SAP will not only continue to meet and work with customers to share the opportunity of the partnership, but also look for new ways of accelerating permissions in the sharing of data from farm to key partners. We will be looking to accelerate the integration of new Farm Management Systems and support newly emerging standards - delivering best practices at all times. Next article...

4 Are you part of the new movement in Precision Agriculture? There is a revolution in agriculture, an explosion in the sharing of data throughout the market. Entire supply-chains are being pulled together through new industry initiatives aimed at helping businesses respond to increasingly demanding legislation and commercial pressures. Nowhere is this more evidenced than by the UK Government s egrain Passport Pilot which is now underway. At the heart of this project was the desire to replace the existing paper based cereals passport with a web and mobile based system aimed at helping information flow more easily throughout the supply chain, meeting increasingly robust assurance and traceability requirements and reducing industry costs. Today there are over 800,000 paper passports tracking 20 million tons of crops that are mostly harvested in a two month period. This means that any replacement system needs to be capable of handling huge volumes of traffic at peak periods, integrate all data captured from all the participants and securely protect, process and support all users. If we consider for a moment the supply chain challenge involved here - you have the trader with order and load details, the haulier with vehicle and driver data, the driver and farmer providing the prerequisite assurance data and processor - all completing their part of the paper passport. So we have a mountain of people and a mountain of data begging to be automated using modern, integrated data solutions, and the benefits are many. management provides real benefits to everyone including quantity/quality data back to growers, reduced data entry by the grower, a platform to help hauliers manage their service, support the grain trade in receiving data and collection/tipping performance, huge time savings in processing data, increased assurance efficiencies through sharing data, provide valuable source for regional data on mycotoxin tests, and many more. So, what the industry needed was a platform that could integrate, centralise and manage these streams of data in a central database, and F4F has built just that. There are 3 key components to ensure industry success, 1) Ability to capture merchant orders into the central database using B2B and web services, 2) Create web access for all parties to register details and enter key data if unable to use 3G mobile, and 3) Provide an off-line mobile application to give growers and hauliers more flexibility to enter data through an epassport mobile application and sync data with the central database All 3 were successfully built by F4F, this digital revolution will on full launch, transform the management of passport data in the UK, and reflects the potential in all areas of the agricultural supply chain especially precision agriculture. Next article...

5 But what about the weather? In discussion with farmers about precision agriculture and their own farm data, one topic is always mentioned. Ok...But what about the weather? We all know there are some fundamental pieces of data required by advisors if you wish to give bespoke field based recommendations on varietal selection, seeding density, crop nutrition and crop protection and then the timing of those applications. such as soil type, soil fertility, historical crop rotations and yields and of course weather. And of those data items it is weather, where everyone has a degree of scepticism about the accuracy of forecasts. In the neutral independent community platform offer from F4F we are working with a specialist weather provider with a difference. In addition to data derived from our integrated farm management systems, F4F will also deliver field specific weather data combined with field specific soil data on maps at a resolution of 1000m x 1000m. However what makes the biggest difference to the accuracy of the data at this incredibly fine resolution is that the base data is collected from more weather stations than are commercially available for sale and secondly uses complex iterative algorithms to determine conditions at or close to ground level as opposed to above ground level as is common in most commercially available solutions. These capabilities can be interpreted as providing field-level information to understand the crop s ability to respond to prescribed genetics, crop protection and fertilizers offered by the major crop science providers. From a forecasting perspective F4F will be delivering both hourly and daily forecasts out to +10 days, together with historic reference data for the same specific locations. This will allow recommendations on both timing of applications and field accessibility. However in addition the data will extend to giving historic, current and forecast soil temperature and moisture conditions that determine plant growth rates and the ability of plants to absorb nutrients and the availability of nutrients after heavy rain. A unique option also exists to apply this weather and soils information in combination with a partner s own scientific crop response models to create customized high-resolution output. Naturally the data can be provided direct from F4F via a highly intuitive user interface. However for most of our corporate customers there will be a requirement to take the data in a digital format to incorporate and merge with other agronomic factors for example variety, planting date, field fertility and so on. F4F will be streaming the weather data or batching the data depending on both the customer s preference and the type of data. Of course weather alone is not the whole answer but is clearly an integral piece of data and another piece of the agronomic jigsaw provided by F4F. Next article...

6 Thoughts of a farmer A precision agriculture summit meeting held in Germany in November hosted by F4F and SAP was attended by a mix of industry sectors. The purpose of the meeting was to share the F4F and SAP thinking and encourage debate and discussion amongst the delegates. We invited 2 farmers, Peter Kendall from UK, and Michael von Gemmingen-Hornberg from Germany, representing progressive arable farmers already practising precision farming techniques, to ensure a farmer perspective to the debate. What was clear is there no is such a thing as a typical farmer with variations in the type of farming and the economic environment playing a big part in how farmers behave. However there are some characteristics that would embody a farmer. Independently minded, practical, naturally cautious but enthusiastic adopters of new technology once proven, determined and sometimes single minded. The reason for considering this is its relevance to precision agriculture and the adoption of an agricultural system driven by big data and technology. Precision agriculture is, of course, not new. However what is new... l An ever increasing focus on sustainable food production. l Proactively managing farmer businesses to grow the optimum output with the optimum level of farm inputs. l New varieties with traits that make them specifically suitable for certain soil and weather conditions. l And finally, of course, the availability of huge amounts of historical and current data about farmers and the environment. When you add the ability to mash that data up and actually make some sense of it, and subsequently produce from it specific recommendations or options for the farmer who can argue that this is not a huge step forward? The early adopters of precision farming can now be seen internationally. They rely for advice on the independent view of their agronomist, who not only walks their fields but knows the area and its weather and soil peculiarities as well as anyone. Furthermore, if the agronomist spots a disease outbreak in a crop on one farm, they can take immediate action to prevent the spread elsewhere. Can farmers really do without such an individual helping them to assess the best options for their farms? Even with all the technology and advice available, there remains a vital intuitive element in farming that, despite ever increasing technology and science, requires farmers to make judgement calls based on their experience. Going forward farmers could envisage a scenario whereby they would be receptive to trialling new methods and practises that can give them data driven agronomic recommendations. However, this is seen as supplementary and supportive of the expert advice provided by on-farm agronomists. The future of farming on a larger and larger scale will require greater and more precise management. It s intensification not of farming, but of farm management and the more precise use of inputs. We fully expect that these recommendations will be derived from data from farm management system, machinery telematics, weather providers, drones, satellite images and used to give specific field based advice. In so doing there are some principles that farmers are looking for re-assurance on. Firstly farmers are hands-on operators. They are typically not IT wizards and technical complexity will have a negative effect on adoption of any precision agriculture solution. Simplicity in both the ease of sending data and receiving data back is paramount. This will require technical co-operation between many of the providers of information, services and products to the farmer in order to deliver a useable solution that may be simply and efficiently deployed on farm. continued...

7 Secondly, farmers enjoy their independence. They like to feel that they are making their own decisions and that their destiny is in their own hands. A feeling that they are simply executing upon the output of a computer with no feeling of involvement in the intellectual side of that process, intuitively feels uncomfortable. And finally, trust. The sharing of farm data with third parties will require a significant degree of trust. Farmers will wish to have re-assurances about the security or privacy of that data and its usage. And to make this leap into the unknown they will need to be wowed by the potential progress that can be made by such developments. This all said, the smart use of technology and data has revolutionised other industries, and these developments in agriculture must surely add a significant advantage for the sector as a whole and, managed properly, should have a really positive effect on a global scale. Comments please... we d value your feedback If you d like any further information on any of the topics featured in this newsletter, or wish to discuss the benefits Precision Agriculture could deliver to your business, please call or any of our experts, details listed below... F4F North America Charlie Nuzzolo Tel: +1 (781) charlie.nuzzolo@f4f.com F4F Europe Alistair Knott Tel: +44 (0) alistair.knott@f4f.com F4F Asia Pacific Glen Andrews Tel: +61 (0) glen.andrews@f4f.com F4F Africa Peter Leppan Tel: +27 (0) peter.leppan@f4f.com Official partners in Agriculture