Agriculture Intelligence

Agricultural DRONES for Permaculture land design.

Agriculture drones can be used by Permaculture design professional; to do aerial views, monitor plants, identify micro climates areas, monitor the health of forests, monitor ground cover, verify water flow, monitor crops and livestock. Drones can be used for precision imaging and precise surveying to aid in building good Permaculture farm design.

Agricultural Drones – Relatively cheap drones with advanced sensors and imaging capabilities are giving agriculturists new ways to increase yields and reduce crop damage, for permaculture it is giving easier access to better designs. The recent break through in easy-to-use ­agricultural drones equipped with ­cameras, for less than $1,000.  The advent of drones as small, cheap, and easy to use is due largely to remarkable advances in technology: tiny MEMS sensors (accelerometers, gyros, magnetometers, and often pressure sensors), small GPS modules, incredibly powerful processors, and a range of digital radios. All those components are now cheap, thanks to their use in smartphones and the extraordinary economies of scale of that industry. At the heart of a drone, the autopilot runs specialized software—often open-source created by communities as DIY Drones.

It’s part of a trend toward increasingly data-driven agriculture. Farms today are bursting with engineering marvels, the result of years of automation and other innovations designed to grow more food with less labor.Permaculture designers and planers must also use the latest tools to produce the best designs technology can provide.

Always walk the area, but then mapping drones are used to scout fields, lay precise measurements,  get a RBG and infrared profile of plants and soils, Day temperature profiles, water moisture, photo and video, track livestock, survey-grade 2D and 3D and topographic detail, also

• plant height
• plant count
• plant health
• presence of nutrients
• presence of disease
• presence of weeds
• relative biomass estimates
• 3D / volumetric data (piles, patches, holes and hills)

and much more.

Agricultural Drone Technology  for more  (click here)

 

Agriculture Intelligence

Big data in Agriculture is using artificial intelligence (AI) to efficiently solve complex agricultural problems. AI systems that can predict future events with high probability using innovative computational analysis, this can reduce  risks inherent in farming such as weather, efficiency, probability of flood and drought, sowing and harvest times.

Smallholder farmers grow about 70 percent of the world’s food supply on farms that are less than one hectare—these farmers are critical to the global food system. And these farmers in the developing world will benefit the most from small light smart phone app’s that are able to access Big Data in local Agriculture. One such method is a probabilistic model for seasonal forecasting, sowing and harvesting times, rainfall and drought probability. With only a 80% accuracy farming efficiencies can be doubled or tripled compared with current farmer guesstimates.

When done properly farmers can look ahead three to six months in advance and with simple basic information determine what crop varieties will be suitable for the upcoming predicted weather season, when to plant, and then  optimize their yearly management plan.

For more information click below.

International Center for Tropical Agriculture

 

THE FUTURE IS HERE

Artificial intelligence can grow a lettuce crop autonomously