Virtual Cropping Creating Big Picture for Growers
Virtual cropping is a metaverse for growers to analyze their fields in details of soil, water, and even down to individual crop leaves. As ag tech continues to move forward with sensors, artificial intelligence, image recognition, autonomous driving and drones, and other ag tech developments, the more complete a virtual big picture becomes accessible. Kathleen Glass, Vice President of Marketing for AquaSpy and a presenter at the VISION Conference on Jan. 17-18, 2023, in Glendale, AZ, talked about virtual cropping and how it will affect agriculture.
How real is virtual cropping?
Kathleen Glass: It’s real, but we’re on a journey. Where we are today is sort of the early phases of pulling the elements together, the sensors and the communications and the data platforms and analytics. And what will happen is over time there’ll be more data, and the analytics will progressively get smarter. We’re really on a very exciting starting point for this journey to virtual cropping.
Q: What do you think the timeline is for virtual cropping going to market?
KG: We’re actually moving pretty fast. Virtual cropping is going to be a collection of different things that come together, so we’re at a starting point of that journey.
There are a lot of different kinds of sensors for an above ground view and the below ground view. The trick toward evolving this will be bringing this together in real time, so growers and agronomists get the answers they need at the moment that it’s most critical to their plan.
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As we’re also looking at virtual cropping, we’re also at a time of shifting what agriculture is really about. We are moving from focusing on maximizing yield to tuning inputs, creating sustainability, and enhancing the soil. What we’re really trying to do is figure out ways through this virtual cropping of looking at the soil, looking at the microbes, looking at the leaves, looking at all the things that come together to make a healthy crop in a healthy ecosystem. We really have to think about virtual cropping as a holistic ecosystem. We’re on that journey, and I think we’re making a lot of progress collectively as an industry. We’ll see more development in the next six months. We’ll see more things in three years. The question will ultimately be what’s feasible? Also, what’s consumable and what’s cost-effective?
Q: A big part of virtual cropping is analyzing data. How many growers are willing to share their data for this advancement of technology?
KG: That’s a really tricky question. Historically, farmers have been sort of cautious. You might even say suspicious about sharing their information. As we’re seeing this evolution with agriculture, there are a lot more growers who are more willing to share and coming around to the understanding that sharing their data is a way to help them and also help the greater community. A lot of farmers are very passionate about that. They want to help, and they want to have a greater outcome for society, for food security. It’s helpful that Meister Media Worldwide has brought together the Global Ag Tech AllianceSM — North America with a mission around data sharing and tech adoption. We’re working with other companies to come together to help that education process and make farmers understand it, so that there is a way to share the data. We should also be very privacy centric. So that’s one of the things that we need to be cautious of as tech developers is that we provide privacy by design and security, so that there’s that understanding that of what we’re going to do with the data, and how it would be utilized.
Q: Do you see funding going into research for virtual cropping so that growers can use it more quickly as an addition to regenerative agricultural practices?
KG: That’s one of the key drivers of ag — sustainability and regenerative practices — that consumer driven desire to know the source of their food, the quality, health, and traceability, as well as knowing that we’re not polluting or poisoning the environment, but that we’re actually creating a healthier environment, soil, and foods.
One of the best illustrations of this is the USDA Climate Smart Initiative, where there was so much interest around sustainable practices that they actually increased the dollar value of the funding to about $2.8 billion dollars.
That funding is bringing all these different parts of the community together, like growers, food brands like Nestle, Purina, Campbell Soup, Hershey, PepsiCo, and Danon. I’m also seeing the tech community joining in as well like ADM. Everyone involved in this is very passionate about its success. All these forces are coming together, particularly around the climate smart initiatives that the USDA funded, and so that is a part of the driver.
For this to work, we need government support as well as the big brands and that consumer push. I mean, we wouldn’t be here today, if sustainability and regenerative agriculture wasn’t something that was coming to the top of the consumer’s mind.
Do you think we’re going to see a huge jump in virtual cropping with 5G?
KG: There are several things that all come together. For this to happen, you’ve got to have the sensors, the capacity to either do computing on the edge or in the data center. You need to have the learning capability of artificial intelligence. You need to have the technology that allows for autonomous driving, for autonomous flying, for all the things that you need for this to come together as an ecosystem. I think the 5G is what’s going to carry it over.
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