Sparing farmers’ blushes with better online search
CONVERSATIONS held over many a farmhouse table will likely have included mentions of ‘artificial insemination’, ‘embryo transfer’ or ‘sexed semen’.
All part and parcel of day-to-day life for the region’s most progressive dairy and livestock farmers. Nothing to snigger about.
But type any of the above into Google and you’ll be provided with a somewhat colourful list of results, and unlikely will it be what that herdsman or woman was looking for.
Recognising the barriers for an industry trying to keep pace with digital advances, Cornish software company SimSage has revolutionised the way website search tools can be used by farming businesses and organisations, and better connect farmers with the information they need.
It has developed a downloadable plug-in website search function, which uses artificial intelligence to understand agriculture’s specialised, but completely natural, language.
“In industry, natural language is the use and interpretation of words and phrases that are specific to that sector,” said Sean Wilson, managing director and co-founder of SimSage, based in Truro.
“Type AI into any popular search engine and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ will dominate the search results received – even when it is combined with the word ‘agriculture’ – but standard search functions aren’t configured to the broad range of agricultural language.”
The development comes as, when looking at farmers’ web use, Duchy College’s Rural Business School (RBS) found that farmers are online to find important information, with Government websites most frequent in those searches.
Additionally, finding information is often hindered by inadequate search engines – with participants calling for a ‘Farmers Google’.
The information gained through the RBS survey highlighted an opportunity for SimSage to adapt its original software. Mr Wilson said: “SimSage started up in May 2019 with our core product – software aimed at streamlining a business’s internal information storage and sourcing. While the original software has been successfully implemented in agri-business already, including Glas Data’s knowledge base and data connect platform, we could see our core technology tackling challenges raised through the RBS survey.”
With the help of grant funding through Agri-Tech Cornwall and the Cornwall Development Company, SimSage has brought in a range of partners to speed up the roll-out of this technology, including Farming Health Hub to enable greater access to information covering multiple farming topics from a wide range of sources, in one place.
Once configured, the plug-in uses artificial intelligence to understand farming language and searches, from which frequently asked questions can be automated.
This means that farmers can type in a question or keywords into the Hub’s search tool and quickly find specific information, no matter how they pose their query.