Precision agriculture and smart farming are making their way to the everyday lives of modern livestock farms. Industrial size as wells as smaller farms are integrating more and more digital technology into their processes to optimize their performance, increase productivity and reduce their workload. The development of sensors, information networks and data analytics help reasoning in challenging environments and create added value for modern farms.
There is still a myriad of problems to be solved, as the majority of farmers are not sensor or measurement experts and their interests don’t necessarily lie in the maintenance of sensors but in farming and caring of animals. The challenge is not only in generating meaningful information from multiple measurement applications, but also in building platforms for digitalized services where the information can be acquired easily by farmers.
Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT) and Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE), the leading institutions in the area of bioeconomy digitalization, in collaboration with Spectral Engines, Faba, M-Tech Solutions Oy, GrainSense Oy and Pehutec will be tackling these problems together in a project called Smart Sensors and concepts for farm digitalization (or in short SmartFarm), with an aim of speeding up new ways of working for dairy farms based on digitalization and developing next-generation sensor technology. All of the participants were carefully chosen to cover the full value chain, and digitalized farm concepts will be evaluated in real farms.
As a world-leading innovator of miniaturized spectral sensors, Spectral Engines was a natural choice to partner with in the project. Spectral Engines’ technologies and sensors bring a variety of possibilities to farming. The scope of the SmartFarm project is in the milk, grain and animal feeding quality measurements. The other companies represent different roles in the business chain, and are focused on data mining and further refining relevant sensor data to the everyday use of farmers. The research will collect needs from key user groups and study different concepts interesting for farm digitalization. Versatile research and the industrial consortium aim to develop and evaluate complete IoT-based digitalized farm concepts in real user cases.
Spectral Engines’ main goal is to present opportunities for farming digitalization with its cost-effective, easy to use sensors for reaching the full potential of farming operations. The company is constantly developing new solutions and adopting new methods and business models to meet the needs of varying clients. Intensive farming is building a growing customer base for Spectral Engines, and the collaboration project will further develop and strengthen the solutions the company can offer in this specific area.
If you’d like to know more about our solutions for smart farming, don’t hesitate to contact our sales and business development.
