Popular Mechanics (South Africa)
Innovation: A tech solution for the agricultural sector.
To develop and thrive, industries must move with the times and adopt technological change. Within the fruit-farming sector, local company Aerobotics is using drone scouting to revolutionise an age-old practice.
NO MATTER THE size of your farm, or what you farm, agriculture is risky business. Unpredictable threats are a constant concern. Pests, for one thing, are a massive problem – be it insects, weeds or other diseases – and they can cause farmers to lose 20–40 per cent of their agricultural output. This figure goes up for fruit farmers who struggle to work out the right time to harvest, often relying on out-of-date estimates.
This is where Aerobotics comes in – a Cape Town-based agritech company that’s already well known for its artificial intelligence platform, which uses drone data and satellite imagery to help farmers combat potential yield loss. The company – which is in the process of setting up an online drone marketplace and also has a farm-yield management platform in beta – recently launched a yield-estimate tool to help fruit farmers track the size of their fruit throughout the growing season.
It all comes down to satellite data, which is actually lowresolution data, says Stuart Gordon Reid, the head of data science at Aerobotics. The data-science team is responsible for all of the company’s machine-learning models that process data uploaded from the field, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
‘With AWS, we’re currently developing the technologies for drone scouting, which allows us to actually fly the drone to a specific tree, drop down to about three metres above the tree, and record imagery,’ explains Reid. ‘That allows us to go from seeing the trees, to actually seeing individual fruit on the trees themselves.’
Reid and his team have developed a proprietary machinelearning algorithm that looks at the imagery that is recorded from three metres (on average) to identify fruit and estimate how big they are. Running trials in both South Africa and the United States, they hope to process fruit imagery from around 48 000 trees.
‘To begin with, we’re starting with soft citrus fruit, but we’re also very much focussed on apples, with pears as a follow-up,’ adds Reid. Aerobotics, who supplies Cape Town vineyards with per-vine statistics, are not looking at grapes just yet. ‘We haven’t been looking at drone scouting for vineyards – one of the challenging things about food identification for vineyards is that grapes grow in bunches and on branches, so it’s quite
hard to tell exactly how many are there. Avocados too, for example, grow inside the canopy of the trees, so we probably won’t be able to see them, even using high-res imagery.’
THE EYE IN THE SKY Ultimately, there are two key details that matter to a fruit grower: The number of fruit on a tree, and the quality of the fruit (looking at both size and colour). So once a farmer has pruned and sprayed an orchard, the only thing left to do is to try and ensure that the fruit is at the right size and of the right palette to maximise revenue… But fruit change every week.
‘How farmers currently track this crucial information is to send out teams with callipers for weeks at a time to manually measure fruit. This information is fed back to the farmer, who will try and extrapolate the data, making decisions about when to harvest,’ explains Reid. It’s a low-tech, time-consuming and potentially inaccurate process. What Aerobotics is trying to do, rather, is use drones to provide this information. Not only can drones go out more often to obtain size estimates, but they can bring back more accurate data as well as exact colour and size information, thus helping farmers to determine when harvest should happen.
‘The estimates produced are far more reliable because we have more data collected than if it was done on foot,’ adds Reid. ‘It’s allowing farmers to go out into their fields as they’ve always done, but instead of recording information using a clipboard and pen and paper, they’re using an app. That data can then be tracked over a period of time to give more useful reports,’ concludes Reid.
Like any sector, fruit farming is full of challenges. According to a World Wide Fund study, about 10 million tons of food goes to waste in South Africa every year – fruit and vegetables make up 44 per cent of this massive food loss. What’s more is that unreliable yield estimates affect a farmer’s ability to plan, and to market their produce. Aerobotics is truly changing this dynamic, using drone technology to solve problems from the sky down, and so adding value and ultimately improving future yields.
FROM THE ROOFTOPS Backed by brewing giant AB INBEV, urban farmers in Joburg are creating hydroponic gardens on inner-city rooftops (see pic above). Transforming the city’s concrete jungle is not only a clever way to make use of unused space, it also has the potential to provide employment to budding agripreneurs – as well as profit.
With ‘Hola Harvest’ (and part of the SAB and AB INBEV’s R610 million Urban Agriculture Project), young growers use hydroponic technology, since 300 m² hydroponic farms can offer the same yield as 10 000 m2 of traditional farm production.
According to the SAB, these innovative rooftop farms are well equipped to accommodate all seasonal weather conditions – plastic-sheet roof tunnels keep the plants warm in winter and protect them from severe weather such as thunderstorms and hail in the summer months.
Fresh fruit and veg such as leafy greens, chillies, tomatoes, strawberries, herbs, edible pansies and potted violas are grown in A-frame shelved racks, and then sold to restaurants and local communities around the greater Joburg area. Profits go directly to the farmers, helping them to maintain and manage the business going forward.
Look out for local urban farms at the top of Outreach Foundation in Hillbrow, the Minerals Council building in Hollard Street, 1 Fox Street in Ferreirasdorp and the African Housing Company’s Stanop Building in New Doornfontein.