Category: Artificial Intelligence

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Agriculture Artificial Intelligence Climate Smart Agriculture Farming Innovation

Harnessing Innovation: AirSmat’s Impact on Climate-Smart Agriculture in Africa

Soji Sanyaolu, CEO & Co-founder AirSmat Inc
Soji Sanyaolu, CEO & Co-founder AirSmat Inc

With 1.4 billion people in Africa and the global population set to double by 2050, there is an opportunity to tackle food insecurity sustainably with a global focus on greenhouse gas emissions. According to world bank article (last updated in April 2021) – https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climate-smart-agriculture, the agricultural sector is a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for an estimated 19-29% of these emissions when factoring in the emissions produced across the entire agricultural value chain, which includes activities like transportation, storage, and processing. This percentage rises to as high as 40%.

As the global population is set to double by 2050, the demand for food will rise, potentially leading to increased emissions from agriculture unless proactive measures are taken to protect the environment. The solution lies in embracing advanced technology to revolutionize agricultural practices, enhance yields, boost farmer incomes, and promote sustainable practices. Innovative technologies, including climate-smart agriculture, precision farming, soil carbon sequestration, and digital tools for optimizing the value chain, all aim to increase agricultural productivity for farmers across Africa while minimizing environmental impacts. By adopting these technology capabilities, we can ensure food security, prosperity for farmers, and environmental sustainability for future generations.

AirSmat, an AgTech startup in Africa, stands at the forefront, providing cutting-edge AI-backed application capabilities and innovative techniques for sustainable crop management. With a strong focus on Farm Data, AirSmat empowers farmers to achieve higher yields while minimizing land, water, and chemical inputs. By leveraging these advancements, AirSmat plays a pivotal role in increasing land productivity, protecting natural ecosystems, and preventing irregular use of farmland for unsustainable agricultural practises. As a result, AirSmat contributes significantly to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and promoting a more environmentally sustainable approach to farming. Through our state-of-the-art technologies and solutions, AirSmat helps farmers optimize their operations, enhance crop yields, and protect the environment for future generations. With a commitment to innovation and sustainability, AirSmat continues to lead the way in revolutionizing the agricultural landscape in Africa.

The AirSmat Farm Manager mobile application is a comprehensive tool designed to empower farmers with efficient farm management capabilities. This app enables farmers to maintain detailed farm logs, track farm assets, manage expenses and sales, and monitor farm warehouses seamlessly. The application aggregates and processes various crucial Farm Data, including soil level information and data from field IoT sensors, drones, and satellites. Leveraging AirSmat’s AI-backed platform, farmers gain access to valuable insights and personalized recommendations for implementing best agricultural practices. By harnessing the power of soil mapping and monitoring, farmers can accurately apply the right nutrients in precise quantities, leading to enhanced crop productivity and increased carbon sequestration capacity from the atmosphere. With AirSmat Farm Manager, farmers can optimize their farm operations, improve food production, achieve traceability, contribute to soil health and environmental sustainability.

AirSmat’s Farm Manager app is a robust tool empowering farmers by optimizing resource utilization and mitigating climate-related risks. We firmly believe that Farm Data holds transformative potential, driving its collection, aggregation, processing, and intelligent sharing through our platform to effectively reduce climate-related risks for African farmers. To ensure timely access to vital agricultural information, our app features an integrated notification engine delivering updates, recommendations, and insights via SMS and popular social media platforms like WhatsApp. Moreover, we have nurtured a digital community exclusively for farmers, fostering knowledge exchange and support. With AirSmat’s Farm Manager app, we are resolute in equipping farmers with essential tools and intelligence to adapt to evolving climatic conditions and advance sustainable agriculture across Africa. This is precision farming at its best.

According to the World Economic Forum, implementing precision agriculture on 15-25% of farms has the potential to increase global yields by 10-15% by 2030. By streamlining and improving various stages of the value chain, from production and processing to distribution and consumption, we can maximize the efficiency and productivity of agricultural systems. This approach enables us to meet the growing demand for food while minimizing the environmental impact and preserving natural ecosystems. Through advanced technologies and data-driven insights, AirSmat is committed to contributing to the optimization of agricultural value chains, fostering sustainable practices, and ensuring a secure and prosperous future for farming communities in Africa.

It is widely recognized that the transformative technology capabilities, like those offered by AirSmat, often remain inaccessible to most smallholder farmers in Africa due to high acquisition costs and limited education on implementing such solutions. However, at AirSmat, we are committed to driving the adoption of these tools by partnering with government institutions and private enterprises focused on agriculture.

One recent example of our efforts is the partnership with Sterling Bank PLC, where AirSmat enables farmers to harness quality farm data and AI-generated recommendations. This collaboration empowers Sterling Bank to monitor farm activities throughout the planting season and enables farmers to enhance productivity and secure the supply chain of the future.

The changing demography, particularly the increasing number of young individuals with knowledge of software capabilities, embracing farming as a business presents a promising growth opportunity for AirSmat. As these tech-savvy individuals enter the agricultural sector, there is a greater openness to adopting advanced technologies and solutions like ours. AirSmat recognizes the potential in catering to this emerging generation of farmers, empowering them with our AI-driven tools and providing the necessary support to optimize their farming operations. By tapping into this growing market of tech-savvy farmers, AirSmat aims to not only contribute to their success but also to the overall transformation and sustainability of agriculture in Africa.

About AirSmat

AirSmat is an AgTech (Agriculture Technology) company based in Africa that aims to revolutionize the agriculture sector through data-driven solutions. The company’s primary focus is on harnessing the power of technology, data analytics, and artificial intelligence to help farmers optimize their agricultural practices, increase productivity, and promote sustainability.

AirSmat’s flagship product, the Farm Manager app, is a powerful tool designed to empower farmers by optimizing resource utilization and minimizing climate-related risks. The app allows farmers to keep a comprehensive farm log, manage farm assets, track expenses and sales, and monitor farm warehouse stock. It also integrates data from field IoT sensors, drones, soil level data and satellites to provide farmers with real-time insights and AI-generated recommendations for best farm practices.

By leveraging advanced data analytics and machine learning algorithms, AirSmat’s Farm Manager app enables farmers to make informed decisions, improve crop yields, reduce water and chemical inputs, and mitigate environmental impacts. The company also offers a notification engine that delivers valuable agricultural information to farmers through SMS and popular social media platforms like WhatsApp.

AirSmat is committed to driving the adoption of data-driven agriculture in Africa, empowering farmers, and contributing to sustainable food production while addressing the challenges posed by climate change. Through strategic partnerships with government institutions and private enterprises, AirSmat seeks to make its technology accessible to a wider audience and create a positive impact on agriculture and food security across the continent. For more details, visit https://www.airsmat.com/

Soji Sanyaolu, CEO & Co-founder, AirSmat Inc.

Categories
Agriculture Artificial Intelligence Climate Smart Agriculture Farming Innovation Technology

AIRSMAT FARMSENSE – ELIMINATING FOOD INSECURITY IN NIGERIA

The recent statistics by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said the inflation rate rose to 15.92 percent in March 2022, representing a 0.22 percent point rise when compared to 15.7 per cent recorded in February 2022.

The Bureau also said that the composite food index rose year-on-year (YoY) by 0.09 percent points to 17.20 percent in March 2022 from 17.11 per cent in February 2022.
In its Consumer Price index (CPI), the bureau said the rise in the food index was due to increases in prices of bread and cereals, food product, potatoes, yam and other tubers, fish, meat, oils, and fats.

The above statistics are manifest with a panoramic view of the present state of livelihood in Nigeria, which gives a glimpse into the level of poverty ravaging the nation with respect to food security. Staple foods such as garri, corn, rice, yam, beans, millet, potatoes, and others have all jerked up with prices above the common man’s pocket. With the rising food inflation, it is not uncommon that some households could have been forced to the ratio of 0.0.1 or 0.1.0 for their daily meals. This is chiefly associated with shrinking income or stagnated income that is no longer sufficient to meet the rising cost of food products.

Also in recent times, a report processed by the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) disclosed that about 18 million people will face food insecurity across Nigeria between June and August 2022.
The stakeholders’ report laid emphasis on acute food and nutrition insecurity in the Sahel and West African region.
The report said the food crisis will affect Nigerians in 21 states and FCT including, 416,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). It noted that about 14.4 million people including 385,000 IDPs in 21 States and FCT of Nigeria are already in the food crisis till May 2022.

The analysis for the month of March covered states such as Abia, Adamawa,
Benue, Borno, Cross-River, Edo, Enugu, Gombe, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Lagos, Niger, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, Zamfara, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). Not forgetting that in the 2021 Global Hunger Index, Nigeria ranks 103rd out of the 116 countries with sufficient data to calculate 2021 GHI scores. With a score of 28.3, Nigeria has a level of hunger that is serious. This narrative is obvious and needs to be changed with all hands-on deck to bring about actions that will take Nigerians out of hunger.
These various reports are very timely warnings to save the nation and the West African region from impending famine. Whilst this is frightening, it does not call for quivering but swift action to avert the danger of a famine outbreak.
The call and clamor by the Federal Government in recent times for individuals and corporate to invest in agriculture and drive towards attaining food sufficiency and reducing imports have become a public outcry. The time is now for us as a nation to take the bull by its horns to employ all necessary tools and technology to maximize food production.

With modern technologies and the deployment of the right tools in place,
farmers can boost productivity and achieve greater crop yield through the
practice of Precision Agriculture (PA) according to the National Research Council, 1997, Precision Agriculture is “the application of modern information technologies to provide, process and analyse multi-source data of high spatial and temporal resolution for decision making and operations in the management of crop production.”

With the adoption of the science and art of precision agriculture through
innovative technology such as FarmSense, a technology developed by AirSmat to address the need to increase efficiency and sustainability of the farming business by offering extraordinary access to real-time information that can help guide in-season decision making.
FarmSense is a device that will be placed on the farmland to help in the
gathering of useful information from the farm, stores and transmits the data to the farmers in real-time on their smartphones so they can improve their crop productivity and secure the supply chain of the future in Nigeria and across Africa.

AirSmat FarmSense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhEBG5iuZKc&t=5s

With FarmSense, farmers will be able to maximize yields, conserve resources such as water and fertilizer application, reduce waste, and enhance productivity. FarmSense is an IoT (Internet of Things) device. The functionality of the product is powered by GSM and Satellite which enables instant connections to the internet anytime and everywhere FarmSense is deployed providing 99.9% data updates.
Through the data collected, farmers can work smarter with decision-taking as regards areas that need attention to boost soil nutrients with the application of fertilizer and water. This further save time and cost from guess works which is the application of these soil enhancements at random times instead of precisely to specific areas of the farm.

The quest to combat food insecurity in Africa is a dare passion for AirSmat to ensure that in the near and long term, with the technological application, the continent would attain food security to feed its population. AirSmat offers holistic technology solutions for intelligent and precision agriculture. The primary goal of the agri-tech start-up is to assist farmers and farm owners in making informed decisions to maximize yields and ensure food security while increasing the bottom lines of agricultural businesses and balancing the demand-supply and price ratios in the market.

With modern technologies and the deployment of the right tools in place,
farmers can boost productivity and achieve greater crop yield through the
practice of Precision Agriculture (PA). according to the National Research Council,
1997, Precision Agriculture is “the application of modern information
technologies to provide, process and analyse multi-source data of high spatial
and temporal resolution for decision making and operations in the management
of crop production.”
With the adoption of the science and art of precision agriculture through
innovative technology such as FarmSense, a technology developed by AirSmat to
address the need to increase efficiency and sustainability of the farming
business by offering extraordinary access to real-time information that can help
guide in-season decision making.
FarmSense is a device that will be placed on the farmland to help in the
gathering of useful information from the farm, stores and transmits the data to
the farmers in real-time on their smartphones so they can improve their crop
productivity and secure the supply chain of the future in Nigeria and across
Africa.
With FarmSense, farmers will be able to maximise yields, conserve resources
such as water and fertiliser application, reduce waste, and enhance productivity.
FarmSense is an IoT (Internet of Things) device. The functionality of the product
is powered by GSM and Satellite which enables instant connections to the
internet anytime and everywhere FarmSense is deployed providing 99.9% data
updates.
There is an agronomic requirement for three sensors per acre providing accurate
data on the farmland. Through the data collected, farmers can work smarter with
decision-taking as regards areas that need attention to boost soil nutrients with
the application of fertiliser and water. This further save time and cost from guess
works which is the application of these soil enhancements at random times
instead of precisely to specific areas of the farm.
The quest to combat food insecurity in Africa is a dare passion for AirSmat to
ensure that in the near and long term, with the technological application, the
continent would attain food security to feed its population. AirSmat offers holistic
services and solutions for intelligent and precision agriculture using artificial
intelligence. The primary goal of the agri-tech start-up is to assist farmers and
farm owners in making informed decisions to maximize yields and ensure food
security while increasing the bottom lines of agricultural businesses and
balancing the demand-supply and price ratios in the market.

Categories
Agriculture Artificial Intelligence Farming Innovation Technology

GET THE MOST FROM YOUR FARMLAND THE SMAT WAY.

Why you need AirSmat products for better yield and ease of Farming.

AirSmat’s staff at work on a farmland.

There’s no better time to adopt technology on your farm than now. With world’s population projected to reach 9.8 bilion by 2050 (UNorg, June, 2021), farmers need to ensure increased food production, reduce cost of production and better use of available land for farming.

AirSmat’s solutions are designed to benefit growers in many areas including precision farming, increase crop yield, soil analysis with proper recomendation and a platform where farmers connect, share pain points and compare agronomic notes.

One way to ensure food availability is to do a proper soil analysis before planting.

According to Center for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (CAFE) soil test is important for several reasons:

–To optimize crop production

–To protect the environment from contamination by runoff and leaching of excess fertilizers.

–To improve the nutritional balance of the growing media and to save money and conserve energy

AirSmat Soil Analysis
Our SmatSTAR (Soil Test Analysis and Recommendation) service has helped many of our customers. Year in, year out, farmers encounter problems due to under-fertilization and overfertilization. Adopting our SmatSTAR service will help you with the exact quantity and requirement of fertilizer needed for maximum yield.

For example, In Nasarawa state–Nigeria, Cyprian Edeh of SkyTop Agro has engaged our SmatSTAR service and he explained how it has helped him to make informed decision.

AirSmat Internet of Things for Farmers
Another of our solution (FarmSense) helps farmers to know soil moisture content, temperature, and relative humidity of their farmland. Soil moisture condition is a major factor that determines crop yield. The amount of soil moisture affects the rate at which plant roots take up water. With our FarmSense IoT device, too-much water and no-water-all is now a thing of the past. This device calls your attention to Soil moisture level, temperature, and humidity.


Disease like Blossom end rot in tomatoes which is caused by calcium deficiency usually induced by fluctuation in plant water supply can now be prevented with accurate info on soil moisture content. FarmSense will reduce cost of running irrigation as the information supplied will guide farmers on the needed amount of moisture per time analysis and processing of data on plant growth in the field. Scheduling and regulation of production to increase harvest. Field sensors and virtual reality to help the farmer analysis and processing of data on plant growth in the field. Scheduling and regulation of production to increase harvest.

AirSmat FieldPro
A mobile application that helps farmers to correctly measure the size of their land. This measurement will help greatly in farm planning. Knowing the exact size of your land will help you with the quantity of Agro-inputs (Seeds, fertilizers, and crop protection products) needed per hectare. Having this information and applying the required input will improve productivity.

AirSmat SmatMapper
Drone technology is becoming more popular in farming and agriculture generally. We’re glad that at AirSmat, we’re playing a leading role to help farmers with this technology in Nigeria. Drones are designed to help growers in numerous ways; one way it helps is in the mapping and capturing of aerial images. With this service, we collect data with drone, the data gotten are used for various analysis such as vegetation indexing.
These captured images will help you as follow:
— To know areas of your field that needs focus.
— To know areas that are suitable to grow a particular crop.
— Help famers to save time, money and increase their knowledge on their growing land.

Social media platform (SmatCrow):
At AirSmat, we have built SmatCrow, a mobile app that serves as a platform were farmers interact and share idea. Farmers experience poor yield due to limited access to information. Our app is available for free download on Apple and Google play store. Once downloaded, registration is straight forward.

Smat Crow app.

After signing up, the interface is easy to browse, click the community tab on the homepage, there, it contains different rooms categorized by different regions. Join any room(s) of your choice and start interacting with growers in your location or any location of your choice.

Register now and join over 100 active users.

In conclusion, all AirSmat’s solutions are targeted to:

  • Increase crop yields
  • Reduce cost of production.

Author: Ayo Adeyemi

Edited By: Kenneth Adejumo

Categories
Agriculture Artificial Intelligence Innovation Partnership Technology

AIRSMAT PARTNERS WITH ISRAEL-BASED COMPANY GORILLALINK FOR SATELLITE CONNECTIVITY

AirSmat today announced a partnership with Israel-based company, GorillaLink under which AirSmat will deliver critical enabling Internet of Things Sensor (Product named, FarmSense) technology using GorillaLink Satellite technology capabilities. FarmSense helps to gather useful information from farmland, stores and transmit the information to farmers so they can improve their crop productivity and secure the supply chain of the future in Nigeria and across Africa. 

Photo Credit: Ken Adejumoh

GorillaLink will enable AirSmat sensors to have instant connections to the internet anytime and everywhere FarmSense is deployed providing 99.9% uptime. With GorillaLink technology, it now becomes easier for AirSmat to deploy FarmSense anywhere to capture information that farmers across the continent need to drive accurate decision and efficiency spending in day-to-day operations. 

With drone, satellite, soil-level and IoT sensors, we are helping to transform the way farmers collect, manage, and interpret farm data. We are helping farm owners and farmers across Africa to eliminate guess work and drive day to day farm operations decision with precision. Precise, accurate data enables tailored application of crop inputs and water resources, eliminating overapplication and overuse of products and delivering the insights needed for growers to optimize land stewardship.

“We are excited to partner with GorillaLink on the mission to help farmers across Africa achieve maximum crop yield and to ensure sustainability and farmers empowerment,” said Adeoluwa Ibikunle, Chief Technology Officer at AirSmat. “GorillaLink has built a unique technology capability driven by clear vision to re-define the way industries seamlessly utilize communication devices in a smart and unprecedented way, that allows companies like AirSmat to be more efficient and cost effective in helping farmers obtain useful information from their farmland with the use of FarmSense.” Likewise, AirSmat’s technology has repeatedly demonstrated that farmer success, economic empowerment, and sustainable practices go together, and we are proud to be teamed with GorillaLink in this effort.”

About AirSmat

AirSmat addresses the need to increase efficiency and sustainability of the farming business by offering extraordinary access to real time information that can help guide in-season decision making. Using the world’s most advanced solution for diagnostics of your farmland, we drive precision farming that empowers the agricultural industry to adopt and scale resilient agricultural practices. With drone, satellite, soil-level and IoT sensors, we are helping to transform the way farmers collect, manage, and interpret farm data. We are helping farm owners and farmers across to eliminate guess work and drive day to day farm operations decision with precision. With world resources dwindling and an ever-growing population especially on the continent of Africa, it is our mission to guarantee food availability for all. For more information, visit www.airsmat.com.

About GorillaLink

GorillaLink provides a plug and play PaaS solution that seamlessly enables connectivity of smart devices using satellite communication providing global coverage. GorillaLink technology instantly connects devices anytime and anywhere enabling smart wireless communication for industries worldwide. For more details, visit https://www.gorilla.link/.

Media contact information: +2347041000987, sales@airsmat.com

Categories
Agriculture Artificial Intelligence Climate Smart Agriculture Farming Technology

AirSmat – Climate Smart Agriculture.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an approach that helps guide actions to transform agri-food systems towards green and climate resilient practices.

  • Growing young maize seedling in cultivated agricultural farm field with modern technology concepts
Climate Smart Agriculture (C.S.A)

Climate-smart agriculture as a bridge towards development and food security built on three pillars:

Increasing productivity and incomes
Enhancing resilience of livelihoods and ecosystems
Reducing and removing greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.

Examples of ways that CSA plan on solving climate issues include soil management, drought-tolerant maize, dairy development, farming catfish intensively, carbon finance to restore crop fields, waste-reducing rice thresher, rainfall forecasts and incentive system for low-carbon agriculture.

Countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) need to increase food production to meet demand and predicted dietary changes under an increasingly harsh and difficult climate. This change will have to be achieved alongside reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Current agricultural management practices and the associated land use changes account for one-third of total GHG emissions in Africa.

For example, the United Republic of Tanzania is creating an enabling environment for agricultural transformation, setting policies, creating learning alliances, and specifically prioritizing climate smart agriculture for the country.

AirSmat climate information capabilities empower rural farming communities and agri-businesses to become more resilient and adaptive to effects of climate change as well as make more informed decisions regarding farming. We also believe with the right information and data, farmers can soon get with the program to help preserve the climate.

We at the AirSmat are at the forefront of practicing climate smart agriculture and excited about saving the climate and also solve the challenges of food security across Africa.

Categories
Agriculture Angel Investment Artificial Intelligence

Pan-African software company AirSmat raises $100,000 investment

AirSmat, a Pan-African Software company, has received a boost of $100,000 from Zetogon, a UK-based company, as pre-seeding investment to help the organization on the journey to deliver world-class service in the African continent.

The Nigerian-based firm will use the funds to get the flagship product, SmatCrows, to customers in Nigeria and support the product launch.

Speaking on the investment, the Chief Technology Officer, Adeoluwa Ibikunle, said:

“The new investment will enable AirSmat to further build on its position as a startup that helps customers to proactively take business decisions backed by intelligence obtained from AirSmat AI-based platform. We are starting out with food security for the continent; our solution allows smart farmers to gain control of their crop yield and general farming activities. Our innovative and creative approach will use world-class AI-powered software aimed at improving the efficiency of African farmers in terms of yields and productivity using the power of AirSmat Artificial Intelligent (AAI) driven software. The software will provide timely information about the state of their crops and general operations on their farmlands.”

On new markets, “Nigeria comes first with an official launch of our flagship product called Smatcrows in October and a similar launch would be carried out in other African countries by Q2 2021,” Ibikunle said.

In a statement issued by the management of Zetogon, it was said that, “The funds will be used to support the launch of the software services designed to change the agricultural landscape by providing AI driven data that will add value to farming and all agro-allied businesses.”

The new product innovation is a crucial area of focus for AirSmat, which will enable farmers to get more information about their farmlands, thus ensuring timely decision making and, ultimately, increase crop yield.

AirSmat is a software company founded on the belief that drones will shape the future. The company aims to provide cutting edge software solutions to many rapidly growing industries adopting drones into daily operations by helping to transform the way businesses collect, manage, and interpret drone data. AirSmat  desires to help businesses unlock the power of drone data.

Categories
Agriculture Artificial Intelligence

Plant Count Automation in Precision Farming

Fruit trees in perfect rows seen from above

Since farmers are usually affected by unpredictable changes in weather and market, it is important that every purchased seed turns out to be a healthy yield. One way that farmers seek to optimize yield capacity is through early-season stand counts and looking for opportunities for replanting. Yet conventional approaches for evaluating stands take time and are vulnerable to human error.

In the field, counting crops to high precision standards is extremely time-consuming. It takes a very long time even to manually count even from images and does not provide a reliable result. To solve this issue, Artificial Intelligence powered customer portal provides the capability for AirSmat provide report of crop counts to our customers. We simply execute drone mission, funnel the data through our platform and the report is generated for our customers.

Farmers are obtaining highly precise stand counts with the aid of drones, and are taking measures to increase yield capacity. In a couple of minutes, a farmer can fly a drone over their fields, collecting images on every single hectare of crop. The data is then almost immediately converted into analytics of plant counts. Farmers can display their entire field or select zones, using the AirSmat AI powered platform, then calculate automatically, the number of plants per acre, row, or field, and get a highly accurate count of the number of plants that have emerged. As a result, farmers can optimize the planting input and increase their crop yield at the end of the planting season.

In comparison to traditional stand count methods, AI-powered drone-based plant count is designed to provide reliable results that are quickly converted into a plan of action with the farmer needing to spend less time on the field. And what’s even more important: with geo referencing capability, you will know where the areas with low germination levels are, allowing you to fix the problem at the very root of the issue. Although these traditional techniques have helped farmers determine the emergence of plants and yield potential for decades, they are only pure estimates. Most importantly, the sample counts do not provide the full picture of how many and where seeds did not grow. There may be a pattern suggesting a soil or fertilizer issue in a given area, causing long-term harm, but this could be overlooked by farmers just taking a sample count. But with the use of a drone and the AirSmat software platform, we can catch the pattern and provide more information for the farmers to work with.

With the AirSmat technology, a farmer can use high-resolution, visual sensors flown with a drone over their fields and capture images of their crops. The software detects plants automatically, from seedlings to full canopies, and places a marker over the canopy to count it. The software platform shows the gaps within each row where plants may be slow to emerge, or are missing, to help with replant decisions. Missing plants may mean a malfunction of the planting equipment, or that the soil was too damp for the seeds to germinate. Farmers can begin to understand what their yield will be, by seeing how many plants have emerged successfully, and how many gaps remain. As a result, further replanting opportunities can be exploited to improve their field ‘s yield efficiency. We offer a range of ready-to-fly drones at AirSmat. Our farming experts work with farmers to determine what they are trying to achieve with drone-based data and analytics, and to suggest a solution tailored to their needs.

Categories
Agriculture Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture

Caucasian Male and Black Female Engineers Working on a Drone Project with Help of Laptop and Taking Notes. He Works in a Bright Modern High-Tech Laboratory.

Agriculture is a vital part of the economic sector. Agricultural automation is the latest subject worldwide. The population is rising enormously, and food demand is also increasing. Traditional methods used by farmers are inadequate to meet these requirements. New automated methods are currently being introduced. These new methods will meet food requirements, reduce cost of labour and provide jobs for people with relevant skills. Artificial Intelligence has created an agricultural revolution.

It has provided a mean for farmers to be more efficient and productive with less, by reducing the inefficiency that comes with manpower. This article addresses the use of artificial intelligence and drone technology   in the agricultural sector. How AI can change the narrative of the agricultural sector.

SCOPE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN AGRICULTURE

With Africa continent in mind, the agricultural sector had to adapt the breakthroughs and inventions in the field of automation. Artificial Intelligence in agriculture entails: smart planting, smart field management, smart irrigation and greenhouses. In order to grow, a nation needs to include these growing technologies in agriculture as many sectors depend on agriculture.

The technologies which are AI-based help to increase performance in all fields and handle challenges faced by various industries, including the various fields of agriculture, such as crop yield, irrigation, soil content sensing, crop monitoring, weeding, crop production. Together with global population rising, the agricultural sector is in crisis. But AI can deliver the much-needed solution. AI-based solutions allow farmers to obtain better yield and even improve the quality of produce.

The different ways AI contribute to the agricultural sector are:

Precision farming is one of the most disserted areas in today’s world situation. Drone imaging can support rigorous field analysis, crop monitoring, and field scanning. By combining computer vision technology, drone data, and IoT that farmers are taking rapid action will be ensured. Data fed from drone images could deliver real-time alerts to accelerate precision farming. Commercial drone manufacturers have enforced IoT Platforms and Visual Recognition APIs for analyzing real-time images.

Some fields of computer vision technology are as follows:

  • Disease detection: The image sensing and analysis ensures that images of plant leaves taken are divided into surface areas such as background, diseased area, and non-diseased area of the leaves. The contaminated area is then cropped and sent to the laboratory for further evaluation. This also helps to identify pest and in sensing nutrient deficiencies. A process sequence is shown below.
    • Identification of crop readiness: Images of various crops captured under white light show how ripe the green fruits are. The images are run through the algorithm to determine how ripe they are. From this analysis, farmers can create different levels of fruit or crop readiness, add them to assorted stacks before sending them to market. Or based on this analysis, farmers can determine if the crops are ready to be harvested.
    • Data-Driven Farm Management: Raw measurements of key crop parameters must be processed efficiently so that numbers or images unambiguously become valuable information. Field-based crop management evolved when Precision Agriculture came to light thirty years ago, but it was certainly transformed by the current digital information era.
    • Crop Health and Soil Monitoring: Using AI is an effective way to perform or track potential soil defects and nutrient deficiencies. With the approach to image recognition, AI identifies possible defects through camera-captured images. Deep learning application helps to analyze flora patterns in agriculture. Such AI-enabled applications support understanding soil, plant pests, and diseases.

PRECISION FARMING

Precision Agriculture, which consists of applying what is needed when and where needed, has further enhanced farm management efficiency by adding data-based digital systems that increase producers’ knowledge of their fields. As a farmer, you need to make smart, accurate data-based decisions. No estimates, no hunches. Using precise farming techniques, you can really improve your farm and solve decade-old problems. It doesn’t really matter what kind of farm you run, whether you have livestock or corn crops. Be precise in farming.

With AirSmat mobile command and control (C&C) app, drone covers pre-defined sectors in a mission automatically without any manual control and captured data get downloaded from the drone automatically via AirSmat app which then uploads the captured data to the cloud for processing on our AI-powered platform. With drone capability coupled with AirSmat platform, we save farmers the repetitive and cumbersome tasks of examining each plant individually and using the same techniques to optimize growth; a farmer can sit back and research the means of optimizing agriculture, while the drones do the heavy lifting.

SUMMARY

We know now, that precision agriculture, applied with drones, is an efficient agriculture management methodology. But just like every modern technology, it needs sophistication and advancement in terms of its practical application in order to be feasible for commercial use. This is where AirSmat software platforms are applicable. With AirSmat flagship software product, we revolutionize how drone fleets running our AirSmat Artificial Intelligence (AAI) enabled software to operate, gather data, and collaborate in the era of connectivity to helping farmers to see growth trends, count and size plants, generate prescription maps, identify early indicators of plant stress, and measure the zonal efficiency of farmers plantation.

Categories
Agriculture Artificial Intelligence

Harnessing Drone Data for Farmers in Africa

Introducing drones’ capabilities, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics into traditional farming is a turning point in the way traditional agriculture is done. At the center of this growing productivity-enhancing capabilities are farmers with multiple years of farming knowledge. These farmers find themselves at the intersection of relying on ancient proven agricultural practices that leave sizeable potential profits in the field and embracing new technology that promises greater yields and efficiency but might seem unnecessary, time-consuming to learn, and daunting to adopt.

SmatCrowsTM

With AirSmat SmatCrows drone-based artificial intelligence, farmers can collect and analyze data from their crops that, until now, have been inaccurate and incomplete. On AirSmat software platform, a farmer can monitor crop health and yields and run a myriad of other analytic reports, all at the click of a button. Farmers can harness the same data to identify and correct areas of concern before a planting season, during the growing season, or before harvest. SmatCrows solution goes beyond simple data collection, providing powerful processing and reporting tools in a streamlined platform, we leverage on the intelligence obtained from our AI engine to provide insightful information to our customers.

Smart farming is becoming a fast-growing global market. In fact, it’s expected to reach at least $1 3.5 billion by 2023. As this market grows, farmers are turning to drone-based data-driven intelligence to strengthen their day-to-day operations and ensure optimal crop and livestock performance. With AirSmat software product offering we aim to achieve and provide deep intelligence to our customers.