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Smart Farming

What Is Smart Farming?

"The future of farming technologies is collecting and analyzing big data in agriculture to maximize operational efficiency and minimize labor costs." (Meola, 2021)

"Smart Farming has a real potential to deliver a more productive and sustainable agricultural production, based on a more precise and resource-efficient approach. However, while in the USA possibly up to 80% of farmers use some kind of SFT, in Europe it is no more than 24%.

From the farmer’s point of view, Smart Farming should provide the farmer with added value in the form of better decision making or more efficient exploitation operations and management. In this sense, smart farming is strongly related, to three interconnected technology fields addressed by Smart AKIS Network:

Management Information Systems: Planned systems for collecting, processing, storing, and disseminating data in the form needed to carry out a farm’s operations and functions.
Precision Agriculture: Management of spatial and temporal variability to improve economic returns following the use of inputs and reduce environmental impact. It includes Decision Support Systems (DSS) for whole farm management with the goal of optimizing returns on inputs while preserving resources, enabled by the widespread use of GPS, GNSS, aerial images by drones and the latest generation of hyperspectral images provided by Sentinel satellites, allowing the creation of maps of the spatial variability of as many variables as can be measured (e.g. crop yield, terrain features/topography, organic matter content, moisture levels, nitrogen levels, etc).
Agricultural automation and robotics: The process of applying robotics, automatic control and artificial intelligence techniques at all levels of agricultural production, including farmbots and farmdrones." (smartAKIS, n.d.)

Quoted from:
Meola, A. (2021, February 2). Smart farming in 2020: How IoT sensors are creating a more efficient precision agriculture industry. Business Insider.
https://www.businessinsider.com/smart-farming-iot-agriculture

Quoted from:
smartAKIS. (n.d.). What is Smart Farming? https://www.smart-akis.com/index.php/network/what-is-smart-farming/

Why do we need Smart Farming?

Why Do We Need Smart Farming?

Farming ‘smarter’ is no longer an ‘advanced’ tactic for savvy farmers; it’s becoming an increasingly necessary way to optimise and preserve human and natural resources.

Farm labor is becoming increasingly scarce due to urban migration and ageing populations.
Intensifying climate change is altering growing conditions in less predictable ways.
Earth’s resources and biodiversity are diminishing.

Quoted from:
Smarter Technologies. (2021). The complete guide to smart farming & agriculture.
https://smartertechnologies.com/the-complete-guide-to-smart-farming-agriculture/

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Organic Farming Boom - Are health and environmental claims valid?
The number of U.S. farmers seeking organic certification from the federal government is increasing amid surging public demand for organic food. Health and environmental concerns fuel much of that demand, polls show. But researchers disagree on whether crops and livestock raised organically are healthier or more environmentally friendly than those produced with conventional farming methods. The organic industry's rapid growth also has fueled debates over whether the practices of large, corporate-owned organic farms are compatible with strict animal-welfare standards and other core tenets of sustainable farming. Some organic traditionalists complain that recent regulatory moves by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — including a decision to continue certifying produce grown without soil as organic — threaten to erode consumers' trust in the agency's organic label. U.S. fish farmers, meanwhile, are pushing for organic certification, saying they are losing market share to other countries. But others say the nature of fish-farming makes it unsuitable for an organic label.
The Future of Meat - Can the industry navigate health and environmental concerns?
Nearly all sectors of the global meat industry face unprecedented challenges. In the United States, a handful of companies control much of the $218 billion industry, making it difficult for smaller players to compete. And the COVID-19 pandemic has taken a high toll, killing more than 200 workers and infecting 42,000 others in U.S. beef, poultry and pork processing plants and forcing dozens of those facilities to temporarily shut down. Globally, meat conglomerates increasingly are interconnected, with animal feed, livestock and meat being shipped across the planet. Growing worldwide demand for meat is raising environmental concerns, with many experts saying the industry exacerbates climate change, threatening global food supplies. Other experts disagree, saying animal agriculture is a relatively small source of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The industry's critics say factory farms pose human health risks due to their routine use of antibiotics, their storage of large concentrations of manure and by serving as ideal incubators for pathogens that can jump from animals to humans. Meanwhile, plant-based meat substitutes are challenging the industry, but they face obstacles of their own.

Smart Farming / Agriculture: Home