TIM CRONSHAW

Last updated16:27, February 27 2017

Murray Wilson/ Fairfax NZ.

A robotic milking system for dairy farms.

More artificial intelligence, cheaper sensors and longer flying dronesare only some of the technological advances that Kiwi farmers can look forward to on "data-driven" farms overthe next 10 years.

Microsoft Researchprincipal researcherRanveerChandra has been in New Zealand for a week offering insights into precision agricultureand advances the United States technology company is working on to improve farming and food production.

He said Kiwi farmers and their innovations could help lead world farming, but they would see more advances themselvesoverthe next decade.

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Ranveer Chandra is a principal researcher for Microsoft.

Farmers faced doubling food production to feed a growing population by 2050 and this would require more technological advances world-wide, he said..

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" New Zealand is quite advanced as far as technology and agri-practicesgo and I think thisis where New Zealand can lead the world because there is more work to bedone."

Chandra was a keynote speaker at the eResearch NZ conference in Queenstownbefore travelling to Christchurch and Palmerston North to meet withAgResearchandother leaders and leavingfor the United States on Monday.

The Indian-born researcherwent to the US 18years ago to complete post-graduate studies and has led Microsoft projects including in longer lasting batteries andTV white space networking.

Chandra said using technology to provide more food for the world was close to his heart as India had much to do to lift its food production.

"I think the one change that will absolutely happen is a move forward to data driven farming."

Farmers would rely less on intuition before taking actions on their farm as they gained more data and this was happening in the technological space and wouldincrease in farming for "precision nutrition", better yields and profits, he said.

The focuson precision nutrition would havenutrients customised for every animal based on the evaluation ofdata showing, for example,their body condition score, phenotyping and other genetic research. However, this data had to beaffordable for farmers to increase its uptake.

Data-driven farming required more sensors andunmannedaerialvehiclessuch as dronesto captureinformation such as the location of an animal, soil and ambienttemperature, humidityand soil nutrients.

The limitation with drones was that it remained difficultto send large amounts of data to the cloud, but this wouldbe solved once faster data streaming was available.

Chandra's research included aerial imagerywork with drones and tethered balloons above cattle farms in the US to plot cow movements in a pasture farm to see if they were grazing properly and pastures were being grazed at the right level.

Abarrier to advancing farm technology was the cost of sensors, he said.Research for field crop farms in the US showed precision agriculture improved yieldsand returns on investment, but the sensors were expensive with five of them costing US$8000.

"That is not feasible for farmers when most farmers don't make much money and ... if we reduce the cost of sensors we couldbring the benefit ofprecision agriculture to farmers worldwide."

Chandra's team found that to shortenrural gaps in wireless access they coulduseTV band white spaces unused VHF and UHF TV channels - and because of their lower frequency they could increase the distance ofcoverage during US and India projects, so farmers could connect to the internet.

"This is how we wouldenable dense placing of sensors if we had $25-$30 sensors and if we could scale this up they would fall down .... because there is so much spectrum available we can get camera data and stream to the cloud."

Chandra said advances in artificial intelligencethat had beeninitiated on farms would be more mainstream over the next 10 years.Artificial intelligence wouldguide farmers with data-driven predictions such as forthe best time to sow seeds,applyfertiliser and providethe best nutrition for livestock.

Weather forecasts would be co-ordinated with available water storage for irrigating crops and pastures or applying fertiliser to them and farmers would take pictures of pests and use artificial intelligence to analyse the best pesticide to control them.

Other research was being carried out to prolong the life of batteries to extend drone flightsandassist precision agriculture advances.

-Stuff

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Artificial intelligence advances to make farming smarter - Stuff.co.nz