There's this thing about potatoes. When they're in a confined space for a period of time, like in the back of a truck on a long-haul journey, they can sometimes go off. You can tell they're past the point of no return when they emit a certain level of carbon dioxide gas. Good to know if you're a discerning snacker; imperative to know if you're a multinational food and beverage company churning out literally millions of bags of potato chips each day.
Simply fitting the truck with sensors that measure the level of CO2 can help solve the problem of spoiling spuds. The sensors can alert a central system and prompt the driver to take preventative action, like letting some air into the container before the potatoes are a lost cause, reducing waste and saving time.
This is one of many examples provided by Vodafone head of sustainability, Christ`ele Delb'e, speaking at the recent release of the Connected Agriculture report, compiled by Vodafone and Accenture. The report outlines several ways ICT is driving efficiency in the food and agriculture value chain, and forecasts significant reductions in both costs and environmental damage.
The ability to access real-time information makes IT an indispensible tool for both small-scale and commercial farmers, allowing them to get a better handle on unpredictable supply chain processes. According to Delb'e, smart logistics have become a growing business for Vodafone, with mobile chips able to track cargo around the world. “We have a Google platform, so we can track something coming from Tanzania going all the way to Taiwan.”
As the world's farming and food systems come under increased pressure, farmers, governments, and agri-business are looking for ways to produce more with less. The Vodafone report notes that while agriculture productivity has been increasing, production capacity is growing slowly, all while the number of mouths to feed heads towards the nine billion mark.
Meeting future food needs will require increases in productivity while keeping resource use and greenhouse gas emissions in check. There are also the inherent challenges of agri-food supply chains to contend with: unpredictable variations in the quantity and quality of produce, goods that are highly perishable, and a complex network structure.
“Supply chains for agricultural inputs and produce are complex and fragmented, with large networks of small-scale farms, retailers, aggregators, distributors and exporters,” states the report. “This complexity, combined with inadequate communications, leads to gaps in information and inefficiencies.”
We can track something coming from Tanzania going all the way to Taiwan.
Christ`ele Delb'e, Vodafone
It argues that technology could help to overcome these challenges by enabling information sharing and collection of data from remote and disparate locations. The information collected can be aggregated to provide real-time updates, helping farmers and businesses to make better decisions and improve overall efficiency.
Sense and react
Also speaking at the event, Mike Saunders, futurist and digital media expert at TomorrowToday, said it's clear the agricultural sector is looking at a number of challenges in the future, such as the availability of energy and water, and impacts from climate change.
“If there's any industry that's been hit a lot in this space it's the agricultural industry. The temperature increases in the higher latitudes could create opportunities of being able to produce a better yield...But in the lower latitudes, where we've traditionally been using agriculture as a means, those are areas where we may actually start to end up with much lower yields.”
Against this backdrop, relevant, timely information could make a world of difference. “My understanding of the future of agriculture is not that we have a problem with agriculture, we have a problem with what we know, and that we don't know what's coming.”
But mobile devices, sensors and intelligent monitoring systems are having a significant impact on what can be 'known' at any given time. In a recent report on machine-to-machine (M2M) communications, Informa Telecoms and Media notes this technology can collect vast stores of intelligence from a non-sentient world, via embedded devices that can listen, feel, measure and report data that was previously difficult to gather and understand.
In this way, M2M and related technologies can help facilitate decisions around one of the major arms of the agri-food value chain: transport. This has become an area of great concern for farmers and their distribution partners, as the growing rate of urbanisation sees the distance between farm and fork continually increasing.
As a report by the US National Academy of Engineering (NAE) points out, urbanisation means more complex and lengthy transport processes, as Daisy and co complete the journey from countryside to becoming a burger and chips. Logistical burdens include increased fuel costs, infrastructure, and time. Using devices that collect data on the location, speed and route of distribution trucks could help mitigate these challenges.
“The biggest M2M revenue opportunity is not simply data delivery,” says Informa. “Value also lies in helping end customers understand and respond to what this global mesh of sensing and measuring things is telling them.”
For example, devices can feed information on truck movements to a central hub, which logistics companies could combine with information on delivery schedules, loads, trips planned, and the number of pick-ups. This enables fleet managers to schedule traffic-free routes and collections of produce that cut down on the total number of trips needed, making the entire system more efficient.
Improved delivery overlaps with another area where IT can play a significant role: reducing waste. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, around one-third of food in the supply chain is either lost or wasted - at the farm, during storage and distribution, or in households. With a more efficient distribution network, fresh items spend less time in transit and are less likely to get spoiled by hot weather. Farmers get more of their produce to market in good condition, and could potentially benefit from lower distribution costs if buyers are running better routes.
Location, location, location
A big part of smoothing the supply chain and preventing losses is knowing where things are at a given time. Writing in the NAE report, IBM notes that remote sensing is used to collect a wide range of geospatial information about in-field systems, while global information systems (GIS) are able to pinpoint locations of agricultural units in the supply chain via RFID and global positioning systems.
Manufacturers of agricultural equipment, for example, have adopted systems that send GIS data to machines to control the applications of seeds, fertilisers, or pesticides. Similarly, seed companies can monitor crop growth trials in several different fields and select the best genetic varieties in time for future planting seasons.
However, these systems require a high level of integration and collaboration, as decision-making in agricultural systems occurs on many levels. These range from decisions about an individual animal or plant, to those that affect multiple aspects of the supply chain, such as whether to allow genetically modified foods into a country. IBM stresses that in order to capitalise on the opportunities offered by geographical information systems, technologies have to be used in a coordinated way.
Dr Grant Hatch, executive director of strategy at Accenture, agrees there's great value in location-based services, as a means of pinpointing where farmers are at specific times.
We don't have a problem with agriculture, we have a problem with what we know, and that we don't know what's coming.
Mike Saunders
“A very simple example is farmers who shear into the spring period, as you often get cold snaps in early spring that come through cold fronts through the country. If you're a commercial farmer with 10 000 sheep and you lose 80 lambs because they were out in the open, or 50 ewes because you sheared them too early, you can absorb those losses. But when you're in the Basotho Highlands and you've got 20 sheep and you lose 15 of them because of frost, you've actually suffered a huge risk-based event.
“So a huge opportunity, for example, is to know exactly where farmers are located before those events, and sending them a warning saying the temperature is likely to drop well below freezing, and that they should get their livestock indoors.”
Trace and track
Not only can connected devices increase efficiencies, they can also play a role in meeting health and safety requirements, and preventing food scares. In the NAE report, IBM executives outline the benefits of food tracking and tracing, noting there's been a growing focus on food safety in recent years.
This is due to factors like the increased visibility of food safety-related incidents; the increasing complexity of the food supply system, which contributes to uncertainties about where food comes from; and fears of terrorism or other deliberate attempts to contaminate food supplies.
Matthew Denesuk, manager of natural resources modelling and social analytics at IBM Research, and Susan Wilkinson, global subject expert for food safety and traceability at IBM Global Business Services, say one clear benefit of tracking and tracing is the ability to minimise disruptions caused by a food-safety event.
“For example, if the cause of the event can be isolated to a particular food from a particular part of a particular farm, the problem can be effectively quarantined, and food sales should return to normal levels as customer confidence recovers.”
Farmers can also use tracking data to comply with certification standards such as Fairtrade and organic. The Vodafone-Accenture report reveals that improved traceability can meet consumer demand for information about the origin of food items. “Research has found that more than half of consumers prefer to purchase a product with information about where it has come from.”
When you're in the Basotho Highlands and you've got 20 sheep and you lose 15 of them because of frost, you've actually suffered a huge risk-based event.
Grant Hatch, Accenture
Vodafone's Delb'e gives the example of a solution the company is working on with a major UK supermarket chain. “They were sourcing things from Kenya and a big issue was the over-applying of pesticide. This was problematic because sometimes there wouldn't be enough produce because it didn't meet the EU regulation.” The retailer couldn't take the produce, meaning farmers lost out on income, while the chain wasn't getting the supplies it wanted for its supermarkets, Delb'e explains.
“So we're working with that supermarket chain, a Kenyan vegetable producer, and about 100 farmers down the value chain. What we're doing is developing a platform from scratch which firstly provides the ability to do a survey by mobile. This allows us to gather information from the farmers on their practices on a real-time basis.” The second part of the solution is enabling the platform to disseminate information, and then creating a feedback loop between the two systems, says Delb'e. “Ultimately what we want...is to have the collection of information, identification of who's doing what, and adapted feedback of information to the farmers that need it the most.”
Delb'e stressed that it's not just about coming up with new solutions. ”We've got to make sure it makes a difference to the smallholding farmer, otherwise we've invented something for nothing and it's not going to help in the long-term.”
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