INTERVIEW ▶▶▶ Izhar Gilad
The first irrigation system with a brain
Israeli irrigation specialist Netafim recently launched its new precision drip irrigation system NetBeat. The company likes to refer to it as the second revolution in smart (drip) irrigation.
BY RENÉ KOERHUIS N
etafim was established in 1965 in the Kibbutz Hatzerim near Beersheba in the Negev desert in Israel where they tried to grow crops in the desert soil and in 1966 it commercialised the first-generation drip irrigation sys-
tem. Two years ago, the company started to develop its new cloud-based solution for smart irrigation that it refers to as the second revolution in drip irrigation. Izhar Gilad, the company’s head of commercial & business development, Digital Farming, says NetBeat is the only irrigation and fertigation management and control system that combines sensing and monitoring, analy- sis and decision support, as well as automation and control. For this it has an ‘agri-brain’ to follow crop growth and recommend on field specific irrigation and fertigation.
“In future every
machine and product will have an AI brain”
What challenged you to develop the NetBeat system? “We wanted to develop the next generation precision drip irrigation that incorporates all aspects in one single platform. These aspects do not just include the irrigation system, but also agronomic intelli- gence, weather information and information from the plants and the soil. These help us to analyse, define and activate strategic irriga- tion. Since many of these parameters vary during the growing sea- son, we wanted the new platform to be an intelligent self-learning platform, and for that we need artificial intelligence (AI).”
28 ▶ FUTURE FARMING | 25 May 2018
Why is AI crucial? “First of all, I believe that in future every machine and product will have an AI brain. That will definitely include precision irrigation and therefore we decided to cease the opportunity. We also see the dig- ital revolution affecting the ag-tech sector dramatically, so again, the time is NOW! AI is crucial since it enables a system to calibrate itself. And since there’s nothing more dynamic than crop growth and water availability, we believe that with this technology, it is possible to further improve the precision and ROI of drip irrigation.”
Is the platform proprietary or is it open? “All hardware, software and crop growth models are Netafim pro- prietary. We however developed it as an open platform, open to co- operation and partnerships. This is because we want our customers to be able to integrate data from various sources including satel- lites, drones, seed, fertiliser and crop protection companies and ma- chine manufacturers. Because the system is not only used for water supply, but also for nutrition and crop protection chemicals. We are for example cooperating with Bayer to be able to site specific inject crop protection chemicals in the irrigation system. Such coopera- tion helps us in empowering agronomists and farmers to be able to improve their businesses.”
How do you see the future of such (farm) management platforms? “There are many systems available from machine manufacturers, but also from companies like Bayer, BASF and The Climate Corpora- tion, but in (precision) agriculture, there’s no dominant manage- ment system yet, like for instance SAP. Maybe one dominant sys- tem/supplier will arrive one day. I’m sure that in the global market, 20 or more systems will not survive. I foresee mergers and consoli- dation and vertically aligned management systems that for instance specialise in irrigation, crop protection etc.”
PHOTO: NETAFIM
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