Digital Farming: Plan Smarter, Grow Better

Due to the continuous growth of population but limited spaces to grow food smarter techniques in agriculture are required. The amalgamation of digital technologies in farming help in increasing agricultural productivity by increasing overall yield and reducing input costs. The idea of data-driven farming or smart farming developed from the requirement to partake in the worldwide competitive and profit-focused systems of agronomy. These technologies are already in use in developed countries. And are slowly making their way into the developing world. There are diverse forms of data that are gathered and produced under this system.  Firstly, the local data that is produced and collected on the farm. Secondly, the data that has been created and assembled off the farm. In one word, the data that has been imported to the farm. Thirdly, the data that has been produced and collected on the farm, but for off-farm usage. Fourthly, the data that has been produced and gathered from activities both on and off the farm and is mainly to be used for off-the-farm activities and can be termed ancillary data. Our system, called BASF Digital Farming GmbH, includes Cloud-services, the Internet of Things, and AI technologies for digitalizing agriculture which overall empowers continuous gathering and analysis of data gathered from various devices, drones, and satellites, as well as in-situ data. In this talk, I will show how the system works, and summarize some of the challenges we are presently trying to answer for agriculture.