Track and capture orchard data (presentation)

Transcript: Why should I track and capture orchard data Roei Yaakobi - TieUp Farming

Hi everyone. Good to see familiar faces. So I was asked to talk about why should I capture data on the farm. So if I would say you shouldn't then just walk off, but the truth is, is that we all already capturing data on the farm today. So I think the right question is how do we capture data on the farm and what are the benefits?

I'm from TieUp farming as was introduced before and we make farms smarter. I'd like to start with a quote that touches on one of the immediate benefits, again, to separate between future benefits to immediate benefits. One of the more challenging dimensions of the farm tech sector has always been the ability to link agronomic activity to farms financials. So the writer goes on and touches on the three main points when it comes to data capturing, which is digital standardization, interoperability, and data quality. Data quality being the most important thing when it comes to data capturing. Some of you might have heard, especially when it's about artificial intelligence and data science, garbage in, garbage out, basically. So if it's quality data, you're going to get quality outputs as well.

So basically today, farms data offers non-standardized and fragmented view of the operation. We all well, I'm sure a lot of you can relate to the fact that we see a lot of cool tech out there available today. The last speaker touched on a lot of them, but still we've got a lot of data that is being done manually, not being captured on a digital one and zeros if you like. And in any case, any sets of data that is being captured is mostly siloed, meaning it sits in its own data sets. So we just sit there and if it's the spray information, you just sit on the spray view. If it's the harvest information, it just sits on the harvest platform, and so on and so forth. So who we are. Farming: we are an E R P system to manage the farm enterprise resource. A more simpler word, farm management software. Streamline workflow, traceability, optimize sustainability of course, and increase profitability are the main value proposition. We integrate, so there's two main aspects of what we do. We integrate other solutions that are more specific on the farm, like irrigation solutions and stuff that were mentioned before. Green Atlas. We spoke in the past as well what Nic is doing. And then we have a proprietary software that is been utilized on the farm and that is mainly to capture that information that I mentioned before. That is more pen and paper and excess purchase. By the way, pen and paper and excess spreadsheets are very similar in the sense of data capturing.

So that enables us to provide a granular profile of the farm Financial with a click of a button, as the season progress. You don't need to wait to get all the data together to collect it from this contractor, from that worker, and so on. It's all there with a click of a button. That touches on the quote I provided before. That is an immediate benefit you can get today.

And we were asked to provide with kind of a case study. So Pollen Sans Farm, utilizing three modules. It's a modular system with what we provide, harvest data, chemical and fertilizer data, and all the agrotechnical jobs. And the benefit as mentioned is as the season goes by having all these financial easily accessible, ensuring they're profitable with today's tight margins. And I'm sure you all can relate to the tight margins of experience. So again, connecting the how I'm capturing the data, we are all capturing data to benefits. These benefits can, you can enjoy from them today. It's not something in the future.

I'm stopping here for a sec. I want to touch on another very important principle. And again, it's enough that I hope you take one thing today from this talk. I'll help you, one data entry point or capturing point if you like, on the farm. So think about capturing data with pen and paper, with various software solution or software that don't talk to each other, or putting it on excess spreadsheets. While having this type of data capturing, basically with that action, for example, scanning the bin, you have traceability because you're also doing the spray on it. So fertilizer, you know, who, what was sprayed on it, who picked it where, when, and so forth. So full traceability. You've got the payroll report, you can pay with it. You've got the real-time management. You can see in real time on the day what was harvest. You can take action immediately. Everything with that one scan, associating the pickers, submit. That's it. And you are already doing it. A lot of you, I guess. All of you, basically, but a lot of the time it's with bin ticket or just writing it down and then transferring it and so on and so forth.

Just to give more basic example of how to capture data, clocking in, clocking out, all the version.

This is a view on how the data has been captured digitally. It's focusing on the spray for a sec. So this is the mobile view, this is the web view. Again, the one data entry point, once you have it and you all, again, you all doing it because you have to, regulations and so on. So, other than the audits, which I should mention before again, the one data entry point, you also can start getting a bit more value with a click of button, you can see a nutrient breakdown. What was used on a specific block, what was used on a variety, you can put the filter on, and a date range and so on and so forth. Same with product type. What products have I used?

I want to give more examples of that capturing on the farm. So Supplant is a plant sensing company basically with soil sensors, dendrometers and the like, fruit size sensors, they are providing a farm view of each block and the plant stress. How the actual plant is reacting to your actions in real time. It's an extremely powerful tool. A lot of you, like I hope a lot of you are familiar with this, but this is another type of more agronomical focus, another type of data capturing.

Another company, a robotics which is a drone imagery company, they now have tool, which some growers use it here in the valley for fruit Calliper, fruit size, and next season, no promises, but coming next season, they're going to be fruit fruit size, fruit load, taking a picture of the bin, taking a picture of the tree with a click of button. You've got everything you need. So again, another type of data sets. Everything can come into the one picture, into the one place, with APIs as were mentioned before and so forth. I should mention for a sec, for example, we just did recently for one of our customers here, a connection between tie to the packing shed, so data flows all the harvest, all the beans, go straight into the packing shed. For more information, speak with Andrew here from Pomona.

So final notes. Microsoft and buyer partnership. So they just announced that Microsoft, with their expertise in cloud services with Azure platform, and Bayer with obviously the crop protection expertise, during this collaboration, which is quite interesting. It's not sure yet what's the practicality of it, but they, again, they just announced it. What it'll probably mean is that for large agribusinesses, they'll have better infrastructure to tap into and technology companies to base their technology on, I guess like, and utilize specialty sets of data and to take it from there, so to speak.

Simplicity. Simplicity is key, but there's few principles, and thing I guess I can mention, but if there is one major thing is the simplicity of the tool. So there's complicated stuff like farm management as a whole with what we do. And there is easier stuff which are more you can just, I guess put it on the farm and it sends it and you view the data and then you take action. But when you look at how to capture data and the whole mechanism, which is I'm mentioning in a third point, try to think, is this simple enough? The other point which relates to the data collection mechanism, support. So when you decide on how you want to collect the data on the farm, what is necessary for the a agribusiness, which tools you want to provide and put them together potentially as well, is what is the support that I've been given? Because nothing going to be easy at the beginning. Everything going to be like, oh, it's new, so you need to get used to it. Just examine the simplicity and the support and long term view, just think about what happened if you've got all this information, chuck it into an algorithm and it gives you your yield forecast, and every action that you take, every action you mode along, it tells you how it affects your yield. So probably most of you aware of the ChatGPT was released by a company called OpenAI recently. They just released ChatGPT-4. GPT-4 can recognize each insect with a click of a button. It was trailed already last week, confirmed. So that going to be available on platforms like TieUp Farming for example, and every agronomy agronomist is going to become a super agronomist, just like that in the next year. Every insect it recognize, it's crazy, and with a click of button, it advises you what to, what to, you know, to use against that insect.

So think about that, which is available, I guess you can say today. And what can be done with yield forecasting, which is the holy grail for all of us.

Last point to think about is when you collect data, you can sell your business easy as well. That's uh, another point to think about.