Periodic Reporting for period 1 - Agricolus DSS (Agricolus Decision Support System)
Periodo di rendicontazione: 2016-03-01 al 2016-08-31
Farmers need instruments that help their decision about agricultural practices for saving input products (fertilizers, phytosanitary products, water), save money, and reduce environmental impacts in line with European standards. The project carried on by TeamDev regards the developing of a cloud application, Agricolus Decision Support System, available on web for desktop and mobile, that provides a precision farming system to support farmers and agronomists about decisions on agronomical practices:
• Reduce over-fertilization by 12- 22%
• Increase farm productivity by 5-10%
• Reduce farm cost up to 504 €/h per year that means 10.000 € per year of EU average farm
• Predict the rise and spread of pest through the NDVI analysis by 30%
• Reduce the water stress of the crops by 20 %
• Mitigate the carbon footprint of the crops by 15%
• Improve the quality of food production by reducing the use of pesticides and fertilizers
This application moves from a system for Precision Agriculture to a system for Decision Agriculture, to guide farmers to take the right decision at the right time.
It uses modern technologies, such as remote sensing by satellite or drone, geographic information systems (GIS), sensor for collect weather data, for collect useful information by crops. These data analysis allow to perform targeted treatments, more effective and more sustainable; are a support systems to increase a clear and correct perception of what has happened, what is happening and what will happen in the near future (Situational Awareness). This system can also be used in fields through mobile devices (smartphone or tablet). Agricolus integrates many functionalities about farm management and provides useful informations in graphs, maps and statistics: for example, maps with vegetation indices calculated by remote sensing, graphs with weather information and other elements supporting technicians and agronomists in plots analysis to ensure quality production. Farmers can better known plant health status, phenological phases, water needs, nutritional deficiencies, and can act promptly before crop’s status get worse.
Agricolus DSS is a modular and expandable solution that provide enterprise features:
• Cloud based solution provided via web (multi-platform, no IT investments required, secure backup included)
• Mobile app to support agronomists and farmers directly on the field.
• Multi-user with multi-level access (Company / Agronomic expert/ Farmer)
• Multi-language user interface
• Sensor hardware independent with different sensors' suppliers.
• Historical data management (weather, production, alerts)
• Can integrate Remote Sensing features, through images detected by satellite, UAV, aircraft, providing multispectral analysis for estimated yield and other purposes.
• Field layout import (we can import also the already present pushpins provided by the customer)
The functionality developed are: crops and farms information achieve, determination of field fertility and field area, analysis of field variability and delineation of area for variable rate fertilization, variable rate seeding and site specific application of pesticides, guide for soil sampling points, weather monitoring, forecast of crop disease, prescription maps.
For this objective Agricolus DSS is designed as an Open API solution: the Application Programming Interface, that allows third-party developers to write solutions interacting with Agricolus DSS, is publicly available and fully documented for all developers to access. It’s designed to acquire large data quantities (big data) provided by external, heterogeneous sources. Agricolus DSS uses the spatial components of ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute), the world leader in Geographic Information Systems. In fact, a significant part of system data is arranged on a geographical base for store, analyze, search, share, visualize, inquire and update information. Very important is the integration with IoT weather sensor installed on fields and with images detected by remote sensing.
In the next months other functionalities will be implemented, according to the farmer’s needs; furthermore Agricolus will be used for monitoring crops in other countries than Italy.
The brand awareness activity has been useful for publicize the platform in various country and actually TeamDev received many contacts and demands from farmers and from companies producing sensors.
Must ferment and interest there is actually around precision farming technologies for improve agricultural management and Agricolus DSS is placed in this sector.
The precision agriculture is spreading in Europe, especially for its benefits in terms of reduction of environmental impacts. On the official website for access to European Union legislation (http://eur-lex.europa.eu) "precision farming" is often linked to sustainable agricultural practice, to resource protection policies and to safeguards of water. From January 1, 2014 came into force for all Member States of the European Union the new directive on the sustainable use of pesticides in agriculture. This directive is aimed at introducing a more conscious and moderate use of pesticides. To achieve this purpose, it is necessary to introduce in-field monitoring systems to determine timing and mode of action. According to the report "Precision Farming Market by Technology (GPS / GNSS, GIS, Remote Sensing & VRT), Components (Automation & Control, Sensors, FMS), Applications (Yield Monitoring, VRA, Mapping, Soil Monitoring, scouting), Global Forecast & analysis (2013 - 2018)" of M&M (http://www.marketsandmarkets.com) the growth in the sector for the 2013-2018 period will be increased to reach 3.72 billion dollars by 2018, with a CAGR (Compounded Annual growth Rate) of the estimated 13.36%. According to “AgTech Investing Report for 2015”, compiled by AgFunder from CrunchBase data, SEC filings, and interactions with hundreds of entrepreneurs and investors throughout the year, investment in food and agriculture technology startups reached a massive $4.6 billion in 2015, nearly doubling 2014 levels ($2.36bn).
This surpassed each previous projection, with a 94 percent year over year growth for 2015 that is greater than the 44 percent growth seen in the general VC market in 2015, according to the Venture Pulse Report. Some of the categories that drove growth during the year were precision agriculture, irrigation & water technology and food e-commerce."