Fitbit for cows, drones to monitor plants – how tech is changing the world’s food systems

The connected cow, wine by drone and rice-cams. All are becoming a reality as the drive for more efficiency and higher yields in farming is helping create an edible Internet of Things.

Technology usually associated with business and tech geeks – the cloud, big data analytics, machine-to-machine communication and even drones – is being used to make food production more efficient.

It all starts with smart planting; farmers no longer buy just any tractor. Guided by GPS satellite guidance systems, 30-tonne automated planters from agricultural machinery company John Deere can plant 24 rows of seeds to a depth of exactly 1.5 inches, and plant them three inches apart. All of this happens at 16km/h, with real-time data transmitted into the cloud. It’s designed to waste fewer seeds, improve yields, and take advantage of the best possible growing conditions. It can also all be controlled via the SeedStar app on an iPad by an operator whether they’re on the farm or not.

The food cloud is being pioneered in Asia by Fujitsu in one of its old semiconductor plants. To bring precision to agriculture on an unprecedented scale, Fujitsu has created its Akisai concept in Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Built on Microsoft’s vast global Azure platform for cloud computing, Akisai gathers data from around a vast greenhouse.

“Various data is collected from sensors that provide information on things like soil temperature, humidity, light levels and rainfall,” says Rishad Marquardt, spokesperson at Fujitsu Japan in Tokyo. “This data enables farmers to access accurate information on growing conditions enabling them to implement changes to increase yields.” Since everything is controlled, the crops are grown in consistent conditions, and the yields are entirely predictable.

The Akisai cloud was created primarily to cultivate low-potassium leaf lettuce . “It can last for several weeks and still remain perfectly fresh, tastes great, and can also be eaten raw by dialysis patients and people with chronic kidney disease,” says Marquardt. So what part does the cloud play? A vast network of sensors around the farm together determine the best conditions for production, precisely control the atmosphere, and even regulate the active ingredients included in liquid fertilisers. Akisai is also being used to grow rice suitable for sake brewing, specifically for the famous Dassai brand. Since the rice needed for sake is difficult to cultivate (yields are unpredictable, and falling), sensors are placed in fields to constantly monitor atmospheric temperature, humidity, soil temperature and soil moisture, a daily photograph of the crops is taken, and data on the final harvest is collected. The results might seem more likely to please a data scientists rather than a farmer, but such precision means yields go up. There are test trials in Vietnam and Turkey, too.

Another alcoholic cloud is on the rise in drought-hit California, where winemakers at Hahn Wines are using drones to save water. Again, it’s about gathering data; these remote sensing drones – also called unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) – monitor air quality and take highly detailed images of the changes in vine density, which when combined with sensors on the ground that measure temperature, humidity and soil moisture, takes the guesswork out of watering the crops.