Apr 9, 2020
Agritecture has responded to COVID-19 by creating a way to continue discussions about CEA, urban agriculture, and local food systems through a series of digital interviews with industry experts from around the globe. The Travel-Free Digital Conference Series brings entrepreneurs, farmers, and experts together to share knowledge with viewers at home.
During the first week, we heard from 5 individuals across different backgrounds in agriculture. Daniel L. Nelson from Grow Computer, Jeff Bisberg from Illumitex, Olivier Frey, Chris Jones from Feeding Cities, and Robynne Anderson from Emerging Ag Inc. In this article, we’ll share 3 main takeaways from their presentations.
How We Can Digitize Our Current Food System
Daniel Nelson, the Co-Founder and CEO of Grow Computer discusses how indoor agriculture is vital for the future due to the ever-growing population and the increasing risk and cost of traditional farming. The surge in climate disasters worldwide is creating uncertainty in crop yields for traditional farmers, “When we look at traditional agriculture, we just see it getting more expensive. Whether its billion-dollar climate disasters, of which 2019 had more than ever before.” Dan suggests that Grow Computer will play a vital role in the developing food system. He explains the importance of digital tools that enable data tracking and sharing amongst other farmers, allowing the user to coordinate energy consumption.
Jeff Bisberg, CEO at Illumitex, explores the use of digital software in different companies and also emphasizes how it will revolutionize the agricultural sector. He goes on to list the benefits of the digitalization of the industry explaining how “digital capabilities have dramatically transformed dozens of businesses in many markets.” Some benefits he mentions are remote visualization, scouting, training, loss prevention, weight increase, decrease in labour, crop insurance, space utilisation and quality.
COVID-19’s direct impact on the local food systems, food security and agriculture.
Robynne Anderson, the President of Emerging Ag Inc. discusses the developments of agriculture resulting from COVID-19. “Food and food systems are suddenly seeming very necessary because there's been a wake up in other parts of the world about the fact that we can’t take food for granted”
During times like this when food systems are even more heavily relied on than usual, food security and resilience must be addressed. The trade of food is very essential to maintain the abundance of food during this crisis. “Some of the most affected areas are going to need to be able to import even more food and we are going to see disruptions around this, so keeping ports open, keeping the documents moving for food that allow us to get food back and forth is really important.”
Chris Jones, founder and CEO of Feeding Cities also addressed the state of our food system during this global pandemic. There has been a rediscovery of locally grown produce as there is now a lot more fear and uncertainty surrounding large nationwide grocers and distributors. The pandemic will create more local producers and distributors while enabling the use of technology for people to connect digitally which will inevitably create additional efficiencies. “Another thing that’s coming out of the COVID-19”, said Chris, “especially around here in Geneva which isn't a big city is the rediscovery of locally grown. People are apprehensive to go to supermarkets… there's a fear we might have to wait to get into the supermarket. Will they have what we need? Am I going to come into contact with someone? Am I going to get sick?”
AI To Help Benefit Food Production
Jeff Bisberg discusses how AI can enable real-time farm outputs and can extract said outputs with VISION AI. AI can help farmers manage their farms from anywhere around the world. The use of AI can help process and output data to share with others to help the food system grow. “AI opens up the whole world of digital transformation to farmers who want to take advantage of that”, Jeff explained.
Freelance Consultant Oliver Frey mentions cases where AI is utilized in annual breeding, stating “There's Cainthus, a company using some machine learning to automatically identify the animals, so there are these cameras inside the barn and they use this algorithm to automatically identify the animals.” Oliver uses an example to show how AI is utilized, mentioning a company from Quebec, called ‘Ro- Main’, which uses AI and machine learning to indicate when it's the best time to inseminate the stores. He expands on his point and mentions that AI can also be used for grains and vineyards. “It's possible now to detect a weed from a plant, so it means that if you detect a weed at the right place, you can add the right amount of pesticides to kill it.” The uses of AI can also identify diseases and pests on plants.