Research focus turns to 'smart' agriculture

‘Future Agri-Food’ plan will encourage researchers to work together in area of food and agriculture

Could Ireland make a name for itself in “smart” agriculture? We are soon to find out. On Friday two research funding agencies – Teagasc and Science Foundation Ireland – signed a memorandum of understanding for a funding call on “Future Agri-Food”, which will encourage researchers in Ireland from various disciplines to work together on questions relating to agriculture and food.

“In Future Agri-Food we want to link agriculture and food to some of the areas where Ireland has developed fantastic research capacity over the last decade or so - areas like ICT or sensors or immunology to name just a few,” says Dr Frank O’Mara, director of research at Teagasc.

“It’s about getting their attention onto agriculture and food-related issues, and turning agriculture into a much more data-intensive operation.”

“The data explosion that we are all aware of in many fields of work is just as big in agriculture and food,” notes O’Mara.

“We are collecting huge amounts of data on farms and about individual animals and crops, and with sensor development and data collection methods improving we are going to be exponentially increasing the amount of data that we collect.

“There’s a great opportunity there I think to get much more precision around what is going on in our farms and to use that information in a much smarter way - that is what future agri-food is about.”

And while plenty of types of information are already being collected, there could be opportunities for more.

“Currently there is a lot of data about the individual animals on farm – the date of birth and weight at various ages; that information is currently captured for most animals in the country, it is used in our animal breeding programme,” says O’Mara.

“But we don’t collect enough information on the health status of animals on farms – why couldn’t we be detecting that sort of information automatically using sensors?”

Harvesting data from the environment could also lead to smarter use of resources, notes O’Mara.

“Farmers apply fertilisers to their lands, and the weather conditions and the temperatures and characteristics of the soil are all factors that you would like to be taking into account in how much and what type of fertiliser to apply.

“And on a farm we have data about the number of animals on each farm and what their feed demand is,” he explains.

Linking up researchers

“We can design better management packages for farmers as to when and how much fertiliser they might apply and whether they are going to run short of feed in the coming weeks and therefore need to take action to correct this.”

Under the joint SFI-Teagasc call, which is currently to the tune of about €4 million, researchers can apply for funding to collaborate on projects in the area, says O’Mara.

“We see it as a way of linking up researchers in different disciplines and achieving the accelerated progress that can be through a convergence of disciplines.”

Prof Mark Ferguson, director-general of SFI, co-signed the memorandum in Moorepark, Fermoy, with Teagasc director Prof Gerry Boyle in the presence of Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Simon Coveney and Minister for Research and Innovation Seán Sherlock .

Ferguson sees it as as a move that “makes sense” for Ireland. “Clearly Ireland is an agricultural food-producing nation, exports a lot of agriculture and food products and clearly has a very strong tradition of traditional agricultural research,” he says.

“Equally our research community includes people who are interested in, for example, big data and data analytics, sensors, robotics and diseases, and all of those things have an applicability to the agricultural sector.”

He cites examples of how data analytics could dig into to figures relating to herds and crops, and how sensors could monitor the environment to help to “personalise” fertiliser needs for fields and detect issues with runoff.

More engagement

“There’s a set of data there that gets generated, and then it’s a question of how you analyse the data and interpret it and use it to optimise a practice.”

He also foresees that developing “smart” agriculture in Ireland will encourage more engagement with European projects in Horizon 2020, the upcoming framework programme for research and innovation in Europe.

“We know in Horizon 2020 there is going to be a significant initiative in the agricultural space – there will be earmarked funds for agricultural research of this nature,” he says.

“More generally, I think it’s an emerging area on an international basis, it is one of the areas where Ireland could be truly leading, and this call is about seeding that.

“We are starting people off, getting them together and hopefully they can develop on from there.”