AI in the Fields: The New Agricultural Revolution
“We're not just looking at what farmers put into their fields we're helping them make informed decisions, based on what they can expect to get out of them,” says Dr. Itay Miyara, CEO of Grofit, who develops a smart data-based agricultural system
Few occupations have as long a history as farming. For the past 12,000 years or so, men, women and children worldwide have continuously engaged in agriculture that brings food to our tables — and has underpinned the vast growth of the globe’s human population. Throughout most of this time, farmers have raised their crops with the same low-tech tools, principally the hoe and the plow. Until just recently, when the field, quiet figuratively, started to change.
“Technology is beginning to massively penetrate the world of agriculture, and create profound and far-reaching change,” says Itay Miyara, CEO of Grofit, a leading provider of precision agricultural services. “This penetration is via sensors, IoT [Internet of Things] tools and data systems, all designed to bolster farmers’ decision-making. We’re headed for a changed reality in which farmers will be guided by data.”
Grofit operates at the interface of agriculture and information, aiming to help farmers harness technology practically and usefully. “We concluded that aceess to data on its own is insufficient,” says Miyara. “Farmers want to know how to grow better crops and how to make best use of their land. The global population is growing, agricultural areas are relatively small and there’s acute need to maximize yields everywhere. This is the challenge which we’re addressing with our knowledge and technology”.
Grofit develops a system called Virtual Plant (Zemach Virtualy, in Hebrew), which creates a digital representation of the crop in a field that is identical to the actual crop. “The virtual crop enables the farmer to predict exactly how the real crop will grow,” says Miyara. “They thus combine their experience and agronomic knowledge with the information that our system gives them about the growing future of each of their fields, and can make their agricultural decisions accordingly”.
The hallmark of Grofit’s technology is its simplicity, says Avihay Hazan, the company’s co-founder and its chief agronomist. “We visited hundreds of fields and spoke to hundreds of growers who were willing to use technology to improve their decision-making,, but all claimed that existing systems were too complicated,” he says. “This taught us that any technology that a grower puts in the field to make informed decisions must be simple and straightforward to operate. Once you have a user-friendly technology that produces accurate and easy-to-understand information the sky’s the limit!”
Grofit leverages IoT, AI, machine learning, and data processing to provide farmers with predictive insights through its ecosystem of six components. The Grofit Capsule, one of these components, is a smart field-monitoring technology in the size of a Coca-Cola can that can be installed and switched on in a minute, gathering data on climate and soil. The ecosystem also includes the Agro Data System, the Agro Management System, the Grofit API, and the upcoming Grofit Virtual Twin. These components work together seamlessly to provide farmers with unparalleled insights and support for data-driven farming.From the moment the system is installed, continues Miyara, the farmer steps from the year 1980 to 2023. “Our capsule effectively raises agriculture to the next level”.
The system learns at full strength
While there have been many attempts at smart use of data in agriculture, says Grofit’s CTO and AI expert Amizorach Gross, Grofit is the first to answer questions relevant to the daily work of farming.
"I was shocked by the limited amount of data being collected from the fields in agriculture," he says, "Almost every other industry has been collecting the necessary data for years, but not in agriculture." He believes that the reason for this is that the we have been asking uninteresting questions. While data systems exist to help farmers with irrigation and fertilization, these systems do not answer the most important question for farmers, which is how changes in water levels affect crop yield. Instead, farmers have been relying on their own experience and traditional tools to answer questions like these. As a result, no one has been using data to inform their decisions.
Today, Grofit's machine-learning is showing the promise to provide accurate answers for every plant, shrub, and crop by formulating equations that analyze the plant's actual function. According to Gross, they discovered that commonly used terms like maximum temperature and high humidity are meaningless for predicting the farmer's yield because neither factor necessarily affects the plant on its own. Instead, it is the combination of factors that creates a new sensor that has a specific effect on the plant. To address this, Grofit developed a system which gathers information without deciding what is important or not. The system learns rapidly and draws conclusions, creating new sensors that allow for further prediction of the plant's growth and yield.
Grofit’s results are impressive, he says. “Very simple actions in the growing process have turned out to be significant. World soils, for example, are classified into several types — and we’ve produced a soil stamp for absorption of water in that allows categorizing each indvidual soil, which makes it very easy for farmers. With Virtual Plant tools, the future farmers will be able to decide whether they want, for example, a slightly bigger or less sweet tomato, and get exactly that”.
Grofit, with an international presence, serves some of the largest agricultural companies worldwide, including Syngenta, Bayer, and Hazera, among many others. Grofit's technology is also adopted by most of the Israeli R&D regional stations, and it has been involved in pilot projects with cooperatives such as UNICA in Spain. Cajamar Innova, an EU exploratory organization, supports the company's activity in Spain, while the Israel Innovation Authority supports the R&D center in Israel. This multi-faceted approach enables Grofit to provide cutting-edge solutions to farmers worldwide, leveraging AI, ML, and data processing to provide predictive insights and recommendations for crop management.
According to Miyara, the technology developed by Virtual Plant represents nothing less than a revolution in agriculture. By providing forecasts and simulations based on solid data, farmers can make informed decisions and manage their crops more effectively. With this technology, farmers can foresee the behavior of their crops, plan accordingly, and achieve the desired results. “This shift towards data-driven decision-making marks a significant departure from traditional farming practices and allows for a clearer view of the future”.
Partnered with Grofit
