PHOTO: VAN DEN BOERNE
PHOTO:EIP AGRAR SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN PHOTO: TARANIS
EDITOR’S PICKS ▶▶▶
“In 10 years, farms will operate almost entirely automated and unsupervised”
I BY HUGO CLAVER
n its four year existence the Israeli start-up Taranis has seen huge growth. It started as a tool to provide farmers with information to detect and prevent crop disease, weeds
and insect damage based on weather fore- casts gathered from aerial surveillance. The technology was then further developed by adding visual layers from satellites, planes and drones and leveraged with AI capabilities. Taranis also created a one-of-a-kind, patented hardware that can capture accurate images at a high resolution from a plane flying at 160 km/h, such as a specific insect on a leaf from 200 feet above ground. According to Taranis CEO Ofir Schlam, smart farming is projected to create a massive im- pact on the agricultural economy in the near future. It will be dependent on precision tech- nologies, such as the adoption of automated practices and indoor urbanised farming. Food
Dutch potato grower starts drone airport
EUROPE
Dutch precision farming pioneer Jacob van den Borne recently started his own ‘Agri Drone Port Reusel’, to be able to legally use the drones to monitor his about 450 ha farm. Mr van den Borne has been using drones since 2010, but legal restrictions hindered him from flying bigger and heavier drones and multiple drones at once. Besides, his farm is near Eindhoven Airport. Mr van den Borne’s farm is also home to a Pre- cision Agriculture Practice Center supported by the Dutch government and Europe. This urged him to find a solution, and so he did. The potato grower applied for an official airport status in order to get a license. And he suc- ceeded, which means that pilots from manned aircrafts, both civilian and military, have to take notice of his drone flights. He now is also entitled to fly RPAS/drones with a maximum
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will largely continue to be grown similar to today, with most major commodity crops rain-fed on mostly large farms. However, there will be tweaks in the way certain crops are grown for efficiency purposes. These crops and geographies will offer the first landing ground for the top technologies, posing the biggest opportunity for trial and success. Smaller farms may soon be disrupted in a sim- ilar way with the help of large indoor facilities with artificial lighting and fully robotic man- agement, bringing precision agriculture to more controlled farming environments. Additional adjustments may also need to be made due to the impact of climate change on agriculture. “Naturally, drones will continue their trajecto- ry towards better autonomy with better bat- tery life, overcoming regulatory constraints. I believe in five years “see & spray” will become popular. In 10 years, farms will almost be entirely automated and unsupervised.”
Satellite imaging is limited due to weather conditions such as clouds and its resolution. Taranis uses drones and manned aircrafts to get higher resolution images, enhancing deci- sion making. “Our UHR technology is equiva- lent to what most drone companies do today, but we just do it in massive scale using manned aircraft. With our AI2 technology we take images at lower altitude, so that can be done by either drones or crop-dusting planes where regular manned aircrafts are not an option. That is why we use dozens of drones fitted with our special hardware to power the AI2 platform. That platform allows farmers to recognise what is wrong and even see prob- lems before they have an economic impact. UHR can capture around 14,000 acres per hour, while AI2 can capture 1,000 acres per hour.” Maybe remote sensing by satellite will eventu- ally replace this, but “It will take a whole new breed solutions, so I would say that could happen in 30-40 years.”
payload of 150 kilo up to 300 m high above his 80 ha big ‘Reusel Airport’ from 3 dedicated start and landing zones.
German region sets up digital strategy
EUROPE
Digital technologies can help European farm- ers increase their profitability and reduce their environmental impact. However, they are more effective when supported by public policy, says the European Innovation Partnership EIP-
▶ FUTURE FARMING | 24 May 2019
AGRI. In the northern part of Germany, the region of Schleswig-Holstein has just set up a digital strategy which takes farming into ac- count. It took a consulting firm from Berlin less than 1 year. Now implementing the actions is next. To involve farmers, Schleswig-Holstein organised a workshop to gather the main ide- as. Also it set up a permanent group of inter- ested experts to give feedback and back- ground information on agricultural topics. Several farmers pointed out they to deal with a bad mobile connection, which causes trouble when they are working with, for instance,
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