Tag: Agriculture

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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 Farming Innovation Partnership Technology

AirSmat and RiceAfrika Partner for Sustainability and Rice Grower Empowerment

AirSmat SVP & Chief Commercial Officer (Olasunkanmi Alabi) and CEO Rice Afrika (Ibrahim Maigari)

AirSmat today announced a partnership agreement in principle with RiceAfrika, under which AirSmat will deliver critical enabling technology for RiceAfrika platform which helps Rice growers improve their productivity and secure the supply chain of the future.

RiceAfrika will use AirSmat technology to deliver unique agronomic insights with incredible, acre-by-acre precision and drive efficiency into invoice generation to rice growers that requires services provided by RiceAfrika. RiceAfrika’s team of expert will access this data to deliver value for some of their most valuable partners – the farmers that produce the high-quality rice products.

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. 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 support RiceAfrika on the mission to make quality rice available across Africa and to ensure sustainability and rice grower empowerment,” said Olasunkanmi Alabi, Chief Commercial Officer at AirSmat. “RiceAfrika has made a powerful set of commitments to its growers, customers, and stakeholders. 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 RiceAfrika in this effort.” AirSmat works with many of the largest farmers, and consumer-packaged goods companies to help drive efficiency and productivity through AI-driven digital insights.

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 RiceAfrika

RiceAfrika is Africa’s first rice ONLY platform connecting all stakeholders in the value chain towards creating valuable interactions. RiceAfrika’s objective is to use technology to improve rice production in Africa. It recently launched a Harvester Hiring Service in Nigeria where rice farmers hire eco-friendly easy to use harvester machines. For more details, visit www.riceafrika.com.

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

Categories
Agriculture Innovation Technology

FREE SmatCrow App – The Community For Farmers.

Cropped shot of a handsome young male farmer using a tablet while checking on crops on the farm with his wife in the background

In our interactions with farmers, we see common problems being experienced by farmers across Africa. To help farmers support each other, we thought of creating a digital community where farmers across Africa can share ideas of solutions to these common problems and support each other throughout each planting season. It makes business sense for farmers and farm owners to compare notes with other farmers across the continent.

We’ve created an app called SmatCrow where farmers can come together and talk about the problems being faced in several sector of agriculture, a community where they share their victories too and encourage each other.

We’ve also provided access to information in abundance that will help farmers make better decisions going forward. It will also help with problems that’s peculiar to their location, scale of farm and different crops planted.

SmatCrow will also help inform farmers about new innovation happening in the industry and how to properly utilize time for their benefits. Don’t we all love a community that enable us to be better?

Some of SmatCrow’s features include:

Farm Manager, Farm Tools, Real-time weather, Real-time Agri News, Disease Detection, Farm Management, Map Export, Field Measure, Plant Disease AI service, Farm Journal, Drone flight plan automation and much more.

DOWNLOAD NOW!!!!
iOS – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/smatcrow/id1589446189

Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airsmat.smat_crow&hl=en_US&gl=US

You can also contact us via sales@airsmat.com or +2347041000987.⠀

Website: https://www.airsmat.com

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.