[Webinar recording in last slide or at https://youtu.be/bsicKqHZIz4, 22/2/2018] As part of its work on farmers’ data rights and following up on the face-to-face course on Farmers’ Access to Data organized in Centurion in November 2017, GFAR collaborates with the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition initiative (GODAN) and the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural Cooperarion (CTA) on a series of webinars on data-driven agriculture, its opportunities and its challenges. Overview of webinar #1 Precision agriculture is a promising set of technologies that is data intensive, but which has limited adoption by small holder farms in Sub-Saharan Africa. Concurrently, current trends in sustainability, traceability, and compliance reporting demand that an ever-increasing amount of data be gathered as part of everyday operations in modern production agriculture. The use of farm management information systems (FMIS) for decision support has shown great promise for improving farm yields and profitability. However, growers are often unsure of the value of the data that they are providing and/or receiving. How does this data help them make the right decisions to improve their yield and profitability? How do growers and service providers work together to simplify the design and use of farm data? How can smallholder farmers take advantage of data in a mutually valuable relationship with data providers? Webinar Goals Provide attendees a foundation for understanding the use of data for farming and across the agricultural value chain. Attendees should be able to apply the core concepts of using data for field operations, as well as how data is used across the value chain. Attendees will be introduced to the opportunities and challenges of using data, especially for smallholder farmers. About the presenter Dan Berne is a highly regarded professional business growth strategist with over 30 years’ experience. Dan led the effort to create an Ag Irrigation market strategy for the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA). He also conducted grower experience studies to help identify barriers to grower adoption of energy saving practices. Dan wrote or co-wrote many of the NEEA Ag Irrigation reports. Dan serves as the Project Manager on AgGateway’s Precision Ag Irrigation Language data standards project. He is an affiliate of the Chasm Institute, and a certified practitioner of Innovation Games. Dan started the “Lagom Ag Initiative” within his company to help accelerate the adoption of precision farming practices and improve the use of digital agricultural methodologies. Lagom is a Swedish word that means “just enough.” It is also used to mean “simply perfect.” It fits our philosophy of helping farmers use just enough water, just enough fertilizers, just enough energy to be profitable while increasing or maintaining yield.

1. 1
DATA-DRIVEN
AGRICULTURE
An Overview
Dan Berne

2. Webinars Co-convened with:
• The Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR)
• The Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN)
• The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA)

3. 10/4/2016 8 AM 3

4. Webinar Topics
1. What is data driven agriculture and why does it matter?
2. Trends driving digital agriculture and precision technologies
1. Data use across the agriculture value chain
2. On-Farm and Off-Farm Data Uses
3. Issues and Challenges
4. Farm Management Information Systems
5. Irrigation Use Cases

5. Data-Driven Agriculture
• Thoughtful use of big data to
supplement on-farm precision
agriculture
• Right Farm Data
at the Right Time
to help farmers make Better
Decisions
5
“Data is just a series of binary numbers. What you do with the data is what counts.”
- Andre Laperriere, Executive Director of the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative

6. Agriculture is increasingly data driven, information rich,
and knowledge intensive to cope with challenges of:
• Supply chain costs
• Participation in globally competitive markets
• Increased need for traceability from farm inputs to the end consumer
• Smarter use of natural resources, especially water, land and soil
nutrients
• Unpredictable and/or extreme aberrations of weather and climate
change
10/4/2016 8 AM 6

7. Climate Change
10/4/2016 8 AM 7
• Extreme precipitation and soil erosion
• Increased droughts
• Increased floods
• Variability in weather patterns
• Weeds, diseases, pests
• Significantly adjusting crop plans
• Increased risks; higher costs & prices
• Challenging to tie outcomes to causes
UNCERTAINTY!

8. 8From the PA Consulting Group, based on n Harvard Business Review
11/2014: ‘How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Competition’
Farm Data Systems Are Now Evolving Quickly

9. Data-Driven Decisions & Activities
• Tilling method
• Crop, seeds, plant varieties
• When and how much to irrigate
• Amount of fertilizer
• Harvest time
• Adding drainage tiles
9
• Spatial/terrain analysis
• Soil analysis
• Weather monitoring
• Variable rate application
• Recordkeeping

10. Other Uses of Data for Farmers
• Expense Tracking/ROI
• Herd/Flock Mapping
• Crop Monitoring
• Field Operations Alerts and
Actions
• Autonomous Operation of
Equipment
• Yield/Profit Forecasting
• Tracking and Tracing
• Government Program Data
10/4/2016 8 AM
Photo Credit: ProFarmer

11. Precision Farming Market
Component Services Application Region
Automation &
Control Systems
• Application control
device
• Guidance System
• Remote Sensing
• Variable Rate
• Driverless Vehicles
Sensing &
Monitoring
• Soil Sensors
• Water Sensors
• Climate Sensors
Wireless Modules
• Bluetooth
• WiFi
• Zigbee
• RF
Software
• Web-Based
• Cloud-Based
Land Use
Climate Modeling
Weather Monitoring
Crop Planning
Systems Integration
& Consulting
Farm Operations
Managed Services
• Data Collection
• Analytics
• Machine Learning
Supply Chain
Management
Field Mapping
Soil Analysis
Crop Scouting
Weather Tracking
Variable Rate
Seeding
Irrigation
Yield Monitoring
Inventory
Management
Farm Labor
Management
Marketing
Data
North America
South America
EUR
Asia Pacific
Middle East
Northern Africa
Sub Saharan Africa

12. Integrate Strategies Across the Value Chain
12

13. Sharing Data Across the Agricultural Value Chain

14. Farm
Profitability
Efficiency
Sustain-
ability
• Lower costs of farm operations
• Save/reinvest time
• Reduce difficulty and frustration
• Strategically choosing the right crops and
markets
• Analyzing the farm’s costs and margins
• Managing economic aspects of the farm
• Managing farm resources
• Field operations practices
• Managing social aspects of the farm
Areas of Focus
for Data Used,
and /or Created
by, Farmers
Focus of Ag Data & Technology

15. Job #1 for Farm Management Information Systems
(FMIS): Help Farmers Be More Resilient
• Respond to changing conditions
• Capture relevant observations and
measurements
• Use the data for better planning
• Manage crop growth in real time and and
under changing field conditions
• Earn more with up-to-date pricing
information
• Review the results and improve for the next
cycle
• Improve traceability to/from field through
the supply chain
15

16. Natural
Progress
GrowersProfitingfromUsingAgData
Time
Data Should Help Small Shareholder Farmers
Profitable Owner of a
Sustainable Business
Agripreneur
Transformation
Market
Manage My
Plot
Manage My
Farm
Manage My
Business
Manage My
Field

17. Source: Maru, A. et al. Digital and data-driven agriculture – Enhancing Use of Data by Smallholders. Pre-print, 2018
Data and information that farmers
use can be categorized as:
• Data that the farmer generates
and uses for farm management
• Data that the farmer gets from
outside his farm and uses for
farm management
. May be open-sourced or
privately owned.
• Data that the farmer generates
and is used outside his/her farm
by either industry or government

18. Off-Farm Resources
• Open-Source Soil and
Land Capability Maps
• Weather and Climate
Data
• Open-Source Farm
Management Tools

19. CapeFarmMapper
CapeFarmMapper is a Web Mapping Application
Developed and maintained in-house by the Western Cape Department of Agriculture
To assist with decision making for:
Agriculture practices
Environmental management
Farm planning
Land evaluation
Land reform
Access to data
Spatial database
Web services
View, query, search and
create spatial data
Various spatial data sets URL: https://gis.elsenburg.com/apps/cfm
Geospatial Online Web Tools

20. AgriStats Portal
Geospatial Online Web Tools
URL: https://www.elsenburg.com/gis/apps/agristats
• Agricultural statistics for the Western Cape
• Based on the 2013 Fly-Over Project
• Summaries per Local Municipality (Crops, Infrastructure, Agritourism)

21. 10/4/2016 8 AM 21
Weather and Climate Data

22. 10/4/2016 8 AM 22

23. Weather data from many sources

24. Example: How the Data Flows
24
Grower
Work Record
Agronomist
Crop Plan
Observations &
Measurements
Real-time Weather Info
Work order
Irrigation
Controller
Scout or
Irrigation Service
Recommendation
Reports,
Regulatory
complianceSupply Chain
Partners
& Sustainability

25. 10/4/2016 8 AM 25

26. Inherent Challenges
26
• Data systems want to aggregate –
farming is very location-specific
• No two growing seasons are the same
• Climate change is disrupting what
were once 10-30 year patterns
• Multiple proprietary systems often do
not work together
• Lack of expertise to sort and analyze
data and make recommendations
• Data ownership and security

27. Data Challenges
Open Source Tools Limited to Specific
Regions
Data itself can be:
• Hard to find
• Expensive and tedious to get
• Inaccurate, incomplete
• Available too late to be useful
• Lacking critical metadata
• Tedious to acquire and transfer
• Expensive to “clean”
27

28. Other Barriers
28
• Interoperability outside of vertical
solutions
• No two growing seasons are the
same
• Climate change is disrupting what
were once 10-30 year patterns
• Multiple proprietary systems (green
tractor working with red harvester)
• Equipment can last decades – data
systems tend to get updated every
few years – can they coordinate?

29. • Privacy
• Authentication
• Integrity
• Security from hacking
• Authorization
• Data ownership
• Data value
29
Data Privacy, Security, & Ownership

30. Irrigation moisture sensor- Chameleon
Moses Odeke: Virtual Irrigation Academy

31. Probes

32. Wetting Front Detector- Salt and Fertilizer Management

33. Nitrate test strips are used to indicate the amount of nitrate moving in the root zone.
Nitrate (the main form of soluble nitrogen in soils) moves with water and is easily leached from
the soil by over-irrigation.

34. VIA On-line Data Platform
Central database
(hosted in Australia-
VIA Farms)
Tools installed
in farmer
plots
Data collected
(Numerical)
Data processed
into info (Color
patterns)
Info translated
into knowledge
Improved
Irrigation

35. Integrated Precision Irrigation
Courtesy:

36. 10/4/2016 8 AM 36
Soil Variation

37. Field capacity = 100% Readily available water = 70%?
Oven dry = 0%

38. Plant soil water uptake, root development, and uptake distribution.
V9
V6
V3VE
V12
V15
V18
VT
R1
Detasseled
R4 R5
R6
Physiological Maturity
.40
.35
.30
.27
.25
.20
.15
.12
.08
.04
0
Cornwateruptake(in/day)RootDepth(IN)
12”
24”
36”
48”

39. Multiple Technologies Working Together

40. Agriculture 4.0 Today
• Highly complex system
• Mergers and acquisitions for vertical
integration and leverage
• Competing constraints
• Increased need for tracking and
traceability
• Risky business looking for efficiencies
• Substantial investment in ag tech, but
specific plans not yet crystallized
40

41. No Shortage of Open Standards
41
AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON AND ON…

42. Create recommendation
(Advisor or DSS)
Develop farm WO/Program
(Grower agent)
FMIS or
Irrigation DSS
(Advisor/Grower agent)
Data Acquisition
System
(On-farm or 3rd party)
Initiate Irrigation
WO/Program
(Grower agent)
Open and Closed Data Flows
Field
Data
Crop
Data
Sensor
Data
Climate
Data
Other
Data
WO / Program in PAIL
std. format
Commands in
proprietary
format
Execute
WO/Program
(Equipment)
Event sequence
in proprietary format
Data sources with proprietary formats
Assemble, source work
records
(OEM / 3rd party)
Rec in PAIL
std. format
The FMIS/DSS can support or drive rec
creation in various, grower-specific
possible ways.
Data providers source data in standard
format
Historical
Record
of Irrigation
and Related
Applications

43. A Few Guiding Principles for Farmers
10/4/2016 8 AM 43
• Start with the end in mind (e.g. yield and
profitability)
• Take baby steps
• It may take a few years to see the full
value
• Get a clear agreement on what data you
will provide and how it will be used
• Make sure you have support; use a trusted
provider
• Learn from one other

44. Up Next
Key Data for Farmers
• Stephen Kalyesubula
• Wednesday 28 February; 16:00 CET
Crossing the Donga – Using Data for
Farm Operations
• Monday 26 March; 16:00 CET
Mobile Applications for Farmers
• Pre-Recorded Webinar (Stephen K)
• Available in Early March

45. Questions?
10/4/2016 8 AM 45