Agricultural research enhanced by ICT

Agriculture research is one of the important part that propel the industry moving forward. ICT enable the research entities, such as national research centers, universities, country institutions to partner with more stakeholders to achieve the development goal. With ICT, the information could flow to multiple directions, more accessible to related parties and could targeted to specific locations that the researching companies need. For example, in the innovative research, institutions are always searching ways to help small scales farmers with their problems. ICT could make it easier to connect with these target farmers and understand their needs and also gain real-time data from them, making the research more relevant and effective to the problem. ICT also help the institutions to connect with other experts or stakeholders including private sector, policy makers, regulators, technical experts and so on. These all speed up the research process and make it more effective since the researchers don't have to spend tons of time getting information by physically meeting every stakeholders.

Also, traditionally, agricultural research are mainly delivered through reports or journal articles. However, ICT made the research more accessible and open by sharing the knowledge and process within the organization during the research process of design, formulation and other steps. This allows other parties to comment, discuss and question about the research, facilitating a collaboration. Web 2.0 tools and social media helped researchers to hear feedback from different stakeholders before the research finished.

ICT and supply management in agribusiness

Agribusiness such as food manufactures and food retailers constitute an important step in agriculture. They are the ultimate buyers for farmers, and at the same time, they are the connection between agriculture to the commodity market. In recent years, in India and Latin America, there's a trend for these agribusiness to skip the wholesale market, and engage directly with the farmers during procurement process. This could benefit the agribusiness with lower costs, the farmers with higher profits and also reducing the business process layer by integrating wholesalers' work.

Such an improvement cannot be achieved without ICT. ICT facilitate this procurement process in agribusiness, local offices, collection centers and also farmers' terminals, forming an extending networking that enable entities and individuals who engaged in this process to link together. Suguna Poultry, an Indian food company, obtain raw materials from more than 10000  farmers scatter around 270 places. Suguna uses world-class Supply Chain Management (SCM) Software to manage the operation and track information and data for its tremendous supplier network. Another company, Godrej Agrovet, who gains revenue from different channel including agrochemicals, animal feed and poultry, uses SAP software to interact with farmers. Olam from Singapore, sourcing operations from over 60 countries in the world also leverage SAP software to manage the production activities.

These companies are able to expand their scales and obtain sources and operations from different locations with the development of ICT. The industry also benefits from these integrated business process.

 

Livestock and ICT

Digitization of livestock management
ICT enables farmers to manage their livestock better through portable terminals such as phones and laptops. The Livestock Information System can take record of the breed, health standard, feeding routine, and all the information a farmer need to take record for. This is similar to healthcare information system where patients has their data stored in system, so doctors could pulled out the historical data and understand the patients status fast. With ICT, farmers could obtain specific information about a livestock faster and more accurately. Imagine a cow can be traced to its great grandfather and all these information could help with breeding better quality livestock.

Tackling animal disease and losses of livestock
Animal disease is one of the major issue in livestock sector. Losses caused by disease, especially epidemic disease could ruin a farm. However,  ICT could provide solution to it by monitoring the health standard. It can also alert the farmers about livestock's vaccination standards. Video camera provides a way that farmers could communicate with livestock specialist in the earliest possible time and conduct a simple diagnostic test through the video communication.

Also, another issue is the losses of animals. Unlike the crops, livestock moves, and they get lost if farmers cannot track where they are. Mobile notes and camera network allows the farmers to gain information of pastures and gates, and also keep tracking where the animals are.

B2B market
ICT links the livestock in the farm to the market of transaction. Each livestock can be tracked online with its status, price, pictures, videos and all the information used to process a transaction. Also, real-time market prices could be checked by farmers, making them easier to make decisions.


   

Big Data -- the new trend of agriculture

    Data collection, monitoring and evaluation is a new trend of technology in agriculture. As Lance Donny, the founder of Onfarm, a agricultural system that managing farming data, said, big data in agriculture could be called Ag 3.0 era. Compare to Ag 1.0, the pre-industrial subsistence farming, and Ag 2.0, industrial farming, Ag 3.0 would be beneficial to farmers in many ways. 

    Sensors could collect data from the field, for example, testing the seed in different varieties of climate, soil condition and on different fields. The sensors could diagnose the symptom of crops to prevent epidemic. collecting these data would create a database for farmers so that they could farm more strategically rather than rely on intuition.

Monitors and screens inside the tractor

    However, collecting data is not enough. The article "Seed by seed, acre by acre, big data is taking over the farm" introduced the phenomenon that tractors using GPS systems can drive themselves and sow with accuracy of less than an inch error. There are tons of data coming from thousands of tractors, without data analysis, it would be hard for farmers to extract useful information for the tremendous amount of data. 

    Big data company then comes and provide solution for this problem. They developed software or systems that store and evaluate these data. The data analysis would tell farmers how effective is the fertilizer, how much fertilizer and water they need, suggestions improving hybrids. These all make this low margin industry more profitable and predictable.

      Also some of the companies saw the potential of integrating the data together to provide faster and more effective information to farmers. Since more and more farmers are adopting new technology and hardware, they came to a point to stop adopting new technology when they found that data are coming from different sources and ends up in different platform, resulted that the frustration since farmers could not consume these information. The unorganized data could not help farmers with better decision.

  OnFarm is one of the startups creating the networks among the industry. They are trying to connect the major players by building data connectors and create a platform for farmers and made the hardware interconnected. Farmers can customized the input and output of the data and eventually get what they want to make decisions.

   

 

 

Farmers can customize their dashboard

    But there's also limitation for this industry. Data integrity and security could be a issue that farmers worry about. They may not want to share their data with others or worry about how the big data firms would use their data. The industry is still under development and more farmers may adopt the big data methodology as it develops.

   

ICT improves the farmers life in developing or undeveloped area

    Information and Communication Technology can play a important role in agriculture. Especially in area that is still under development, access to information would bring farmers effectiveness, profitability and also opportunities.
   
    With ICT, farmers could learn more information about weather, soil status and other conditions that are important to make farming decisions. They could buy seeds, fertilizer, farming tools and sell their products with better understanding of the market. They can see the prices online, find the best resources and contact with reliable buyers throughout internet. Also, they could get access to the new technology and learn to farm in more scientific ways. Such as, which crops are better suited for the environment of their land and how to improve productivity effectively. ICT also provide opportunities for farmers to expand their land by searching land available online and expand their business buy selling to larger buyers.
 
     ICT allows farmers to obtain these information that could increase productivity, increase their core competence, increase the reliability of production, and enhance the techniques they use for farming. Farmers are also exposed to large opportunities to start small business in village using ICT or collaborate with other local farmers and business to generate large scale of production and sales.
 
    All these were not possible before, especially in rural areas where transportation is not developed well. Information in those areas are closed, and the linkage between these villages and outside world highly depending on the merchant who buy crops from them. As a result, farmers has low bargaining power and the profit level are squeezed, making farmer's life hard. Also, since farming is highly depending on human power, weather condition, pest condition and the market demand, without ICT and technology, it was very tough for farmers. Less and less young people choose to stay in agricultural market, causing the declining of the market, one of the example could be China.

    However, with ICT,  farming is no longer a job requires manual labor only, it includes technology, business sense, economics, biology, chemistry and other areas of study. Overall, ICT gradually help agriculture to develop into a field that integrate with the society better with more opportunities and profitability for farmers.

Here is a short video that talks about how ICT improved farming and affect youth. Please check it out.