Digital Agriculture

Mihai Anitei
Introduction and Background Information
The agriculture and food sector is facing
multiple challenges:
- Increase of global population from
7.6 billion in 2018 (UN DESA, 2019) to
over 9.6 billion in 2050 will lead to a
significant increase in the demand for
food (UN DESA, 2017).
- The availability of natural resources
such as fresh water and productive
arable land is becoming increasingly
constrained.
- Achieving the UN Sustainable
Development Goal of a ‘world with
zero hunger’ by 2030 will require
more productive, efficient,
sustainable, inclusive, transparent
and resilient food systems (FAO,
2017b p. 140). This will require an
urgent transformation of the current
agrifood system.
The digital agriculture revolution may be
part of the solution. The so-called
‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ (Industry
4.0) is seeing several sectors rapidly
transformed by ‘disruptive’ digital
technologies.
Digital technologies are creating new
opportunities to integrate smallholders
in a digitally driven agrifood system
(USAID, 2018). Nowadays, there are
number of companies, which
successfully support agribusiness with
the use of modern technologies.
7.8% of the Planet
should ensure the
food for all the
population
 5 major trends will transform the farms
over the next 30 years…
According to
AgFunder, USD
$10.1B was
invested into
agrifood tech
globally in 2017

"Digital technology isn't optional:

it's a necessity for survival."
"Digital technology is a
driver of transformation."
"New practices are going to
shake up all of our processes."
 Why and who? Statistic data
• Millennial and Gen Z consumers are more likely
than previous generations to accept new
technologies. Gen Z will comprise 32% of the
global population of 7.7 billion in 2019, nudging
ahead of millennials, who will account for a 31.5%
share based on a Bloomberg analysis of UN Data
and using 2000/2001 as the generational split.
• It is predicted that IoT device installations in
agriculture will increase from 30 million in 2015 to
75 million in 2022, for a compound annual growth
rate of 20%.
• In agriculture, the application of distributed
ledgers is ideally implemented in conjunction with
Internet of Things (IoT) devices (sensors,
scanners), which remove the human error
component. Key applications for distributed
ledgers in agriculture include removing costs (e.g.,
middle actors) and improving traceability (e.g.,
food safety control).
Digital Agriculture
Aquaponics
The word "aquaponics" was created by combining
the words "aquaculture" and "hidroponics".
• NIK is an international group of companies with more than 20
years of experience in the field of precision agriculture. We
started operations in Bulgaria and with the time, we expanded to
several foreign markets, including Romania, Italy, Ukraine.
Sentinel Plante
Sentinel plants act as indicators of biotic or abiotic stress in cropping systems, by
providing an early signal such as changing leaf color in response to a stress
event. These plants can provide early warning of new and emerging pests and
diseases, nutrient deficiencies, or changes in soil conditions.
Example: rosebushes planted in vineyards which show earlier symptoms of
fungal diseases compared to grapes, allowing for mitigating action to be taken.

Sentinel plant networks

are also being
developed which allow
for surveillance on
national and
international scales to
identify global threats
from pests and diseases
at an early stage (in
ports, for example).
Green Ammonia
Drones

• PLANTING SEEDS
The seed planting is almost 10 times faster than humans planting trees by hand and can
potentially decrease overall costs by half.
• SPRAYING PESTICIDES
By using drones rather than pesticide-spraying planes, farmers can now target exactly
which crops need pesticides and how much needs to be sprayed while the drones
actually spray them…avoiding obstacles.
• OVERALL ANALYSIS OF CROP FIELDS
Drones can help farmers to: assess crop health, spot fungal infections on trees, locate
growth bottlenecks, locate poor irrigation, and gather general information on
environmental conditions.
• ONGOING MONITORING
Having eyes-in-the-sky proves to be an especially powerful tool for farmers who have
trouble keeping track of different metrics, bringing updated information
on exactly what’s happening on their land.
Pros & Cons of using drones in agriculture
Parameter Satellite Drone (UAV)
Provide a limited way to scale the process,
Scalability Scalable with a systematic monitoring of particularly for large industrial growers and
land on a large scale large areas of land
Spatial resolution Typically in the range of 20-50 cm/pixel Ultra high, can be up to few cm/pixel
Temporal
resolution Limited by the orbit coverage patterns of Very flexible – Imagery is available on
and operational satellites – Unfavorable revisit times, demand – Short revisit time
flexibility satellite coverage is periodic
Limited, lacks the spectral resolution
Spectral resolution required for many quantitative remote Narrowband hyperspectral imaging sensors
sensing applications
Minimum-area 100’s to 1000’s sq. km need to be
sale requirements purchased per order Not relevant
0.5-5 USD per hectare per 1 data
acquisition + transportation and
Costs 0.01 to 0.5-1 USD per hectare per 1 accommodation costs of drone operator.
data acquisition Can be defined by a daily rate, i.e. 1000
USD per day.
Dependency on Vulnerable to any limitations on visibility Decreases dependence on weather
weather conditions (such as clouds) conditions (such as clouds), as the
operating altitude of a drone is below 500m
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

Photo: Indigo Ag
is a Boston-based agricultural
technology company that works
with plant microbes, aiming to
improve yields of cotton, wheat,
corn, soybeans and rice, and
optimize the plant health.
Benefits:
Indigo Ag’s seed coatings improve crop
yields, typically by more than 10%.
Indigo grains are grown using less
water or producing lower amounts of
greenhouse gas emissions than
average.
Convenient communication opportunity
between buyers and farmers.
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

is creating efficient and environment friendly replacement of tractors.

“The Tom robot lives on your farm
and digitises your fields. He monitors
them on a plant by plant basis,
keeping track of the health and
development of each plant.“
“Dick micro-sprays each plant with
fertilisers or chemicals as required to
help it thrive. Dick precisely sprays
the plant and puts the fertiliser onto
the roots.”
“Harry is the world's first robotic drill
for combinable crops. He places
individual seeds in the ground and
accurately records exactly where he
has placed them.”

Benefits: An increased yield, as well as minimal chemical usage. So one can increase revenues
by up to 40% while reducing costs by up to 60%.
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

uses drones for planting tree

seeds, spraying fertilizers and
herbicides, and collecting field
data.
Drones scout a burned area,
mapping it with high accuracy,
including objects and plant
species, fumigate it efficiently and
autonomously, identify where
trees would grow best, then
deploy painstakingly designed
seed-nutrient packages to those
locations.
Benefits: Cheaper, less wasteful and dangerous than helicopters and smart enough to scale to
forests currently at risk of permanent damage.
 Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

is the commercial leader in indoor

farming. They grow without sun or
soil in a fully-controlled indoor
environment. By using aeroponic
technology the farm is able to
produce and sell up to two million
pounds of pesticide-free leafy
greens per year.

Benefits: Aeroponic systems enables

the production of plants using 95
percent less water. AeroFarms
produces 130 times more plants than
the average field farm of the same size.
Less land, less time and no pesticides.
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

is an indoor vertical farming

company which produces
hydroponically without soil - with
LED lights year-round.
Benefits: Some crops, like wheat,
are too expensive to grow indoors at
scale to be realistic ventures, but
the vertical nature of Plenty’s farms
doesn’t represent a barrier,
according to Plenty.
Unlike outdoor farmers, Plenty’s
engineers don’t have to think about
the seasons, pests or what plants
will grow best locally.
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies
With installed sensors in the
fields Agrosmart gathers
information pertaining to soil
moisture, plant hydration,
weather conditions, etc.,
compares the KPIs to drones and
satellite databases, which helps
to understand the farm as a
whole.
Agrosmart provides daily
recommendations via App or
SMS.

Benefits: Farmers increase

productivity, save water, labor and
consequently money.
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

is one of the few companies

that has tried to tackle
Automation for harvesting
crops. It has developed an
apple-picking robot that can
safely pick apples of different
sizes.
The robot uses computer
vision to pick the apples. The
apple is accurately
pinpointed and a vacuum
robotic arm takes it off the
tree limb.

Benefits: harvesting without damaging food and trees in a time efficient manner.
 Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

• enables the use of electricity to

kill common, harmful and
invasive weeds by boiling them
inside out from the root up.
• it’s an organic technology which
reduces carbon emissions and
water consumption.
• offers instant treatment.

Benefits: The company offers a chemichal-free treatment which is sustainable and scalable
alternative to herbicides.
Rootwave is also useful fighting number of weeds that are resistant to herbicides.
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

adds a layer of
plant-derived
protection to the
surface of fresh
produce to slow
water loss and
oxidation — the
factors that cause
spoilage.

Benefits: It can combat the problem of food waste with its primary product, a tasteless,
odorless, edible coating made from plant materials.
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

has built a smart, robotic

system, called “Field
Analyzer”, designed to
assist farmers to accurately
fertilize and spray their
fields, having 6-12
multispectral cameras and
using real time image
processing / AI technologies
Benefits: According to Augmenta, its Field Analyzer
to measure canopy shape,
is currently in beta testing. Additionally, it claims size & light reflectance to
that its technology can improve crop yields by up to ultimately determine the
12%, enhance crop quality by up to 20% and perfect amount of crop
reduce fertilizer use by 15%. inputs for every spot.
Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies
Hectare Agritech has a
trading platform which
allow farmers to sell
products directly from
their farms and handle
payments through the
company’s digital
payment system.

The company aims to

improve price and
purchasing transparency
in both sectors,
eliminating
intermediaries.

Benefits: Convenient and efficient platform for farmers.

 Some of the Most Successful Ag-Tech
companies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdUcOyax34U
QUESTIONS?