IN WHAT could be the first step of automated agronomy, precision agriculture company, Farmers Edge have launched a digital tool that tracks plant growth changes and alerts the user when an issue occurs.
Farmers Edge, head of global digital agriculture, Jamie Denbow said the tool uses proprietary algorithms to detect significant changes between high-resolution satellite images of a paddock over time. The algorithms automatically trigger a notification, outlining positive or negative vegetative changes in the paddock, and notify growers through an email.
Mr Denbow said the release was the culmination of a long process of developing and ground-truthing algorithms with farmers across the world, including Australia.
“The feedback has been very positive,” he said.
“An agronomist recently used the system to identify two strips of black oats in a paddock.”
Mr Denbow said the algorithm would identify any issues affecting the growth of the crop or an anomaly in the paddock.
“If an agronomist hadn’t been to the field, or missed a small patch of weeds an alert will notify the agronomist the patches are present,” he said.
“In cases like disease, insect, mechanical damage or drift from herbicide, they would show up as negative vegetation notifications.”
Mr Denbow said the tool would be very valuable to agronomists as it would allow them to direct their scouting.
“We have the best imagery in the market place, at the highest resolution,” he said.
“Instead of going to a paddock and driving through it in the hopes of finding a patch or problem, they will go to the paddock and directly to the patch.
“It will send you a short list of fields so they know what to spend their time and attention on.”
Farmers Edge, chief executive officer, Wade Barnes said the tool also enhanced the value of daily imagery by saving growers time and allowing issues to be identified faster.
“Last year, we solved the challenge of infrequent, inconsistent imagery available to growers with the integration of daily satellite imagery into our platform,” he said.
“Now, growers see at least one, if not multiple, paddock images per day, which is a good problem to have, but it can also be time-consuming.
“Our growers’ needs drive our commitment to build digital solutions that are simple, fast, and trustworthy, so we developed this revolutionary tool that automatically detects, pulls, and delivers the insights they need.”
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