Technology to help manage crops
FIVE innovations to help farmers manage their crops, identify stressed trees and spot individual pests and diseases without stepping foot on the farm were introduced during Aerobotics’ Future of Farming 2018 events in Franschhoek.
The events were held in 11 locations in mostly farming communities around South Africa with more than 700 people in attending.
Global agriculture company Aerobotics’ technology and solutions announced innovations, designed with the farmer in mind to build on Aerobotics’ world leading solutions that have been helping farmers with early pest and disease detection for years.
Aerobotics co-founder and chief executive James Paterson said: “We have been working extremely hard over the past few years with growers and industry partners to create technology that will completely change how farmers manage their crops, identify stressed trees and spot individual pests and diseases without stepping foot on the farm.
“This kind of technology has been the stuff of agri-tech legend, but today we are making the Future of Farming a reality.”
Aerobotics’ innovation uses drones to capture high resolution images of stressed trees and these will be run through their database.
Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, pests and disease will be identified, and the results then communicated via push notifications to the farmer.
Additionally, the Aeroview system will now automatically generate scout routes for farmers using Aerobotics AI.
“Until now, the farmer has had to take time to visit each individual tree and rely on experience and knowledge in the field to identify pests and disease.
“Aeroview has the technology to do all of this for the farmer. The amount of time, energy and money that farmers can save with Aerobotics’ new technology is impressive,” said Aerobotics data science manager Michael Malahe.
He said that once the system had automatically detected problem trees that needed further investigation and a scout route had been planned using AI, Aerobotics’ Drone Scouting Application would send the route to a drone.
Agri SA president Dan Kriek said technological innovations in agriculture accessible to the ordinary producer were crucial for ensuring South Africa’s food security on a sustainable basis.
Those that missed the live event or stream of the Future of Farming 2018 can learn more about Aerobotics and test the new, groundbreaking technology at www.aerobotics.io