Computer science professors Chandra Krintz and Rich Wolski have begun using data analytics and cloud computing to solve some of agriculture's challenges.
Farm land is sinking, especially in California, because of drought. The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization have released studies stating that while the need for food is growing, farm labor is becoming less available and affordable. Food growth takes 80 percent of the world's fresh water and 30 percent of global energy.
But using data over cloud to link information on a farm and surrounding it with IoT sensors could solve some of those problems.
"UCSB SmartFarm is a research project that investigates the design and implementation of an open source, hybrid cloud approach to agriculture analytics for enabling sustainable farming practices," the project's site reads.
The products should be private, inexpensive and easy to use but also target specific problems, like keeping frost off citrus trees with environmental controls.
The system needs to help automate operations and present farmers with up-to-the-minute data but cannot require a staff.
The project overview writes that the system will:
- Integrate disparate environmental and Internet of Things (IoT) sensor technologies into an on-farm, private cloud software infrastructure that ensures that all private data remains under the control of farmers.
- Provide farmers with a secure, easy to use, low-cost data analysis system.
- Couple data from external cloud sources (weather predictions, satellite imagery, state and national data sets, etc.) with farm-local statistics.
- Provide an interface into which custom analytics apps can be plugged (via an AppStore model).
Systems are being tested in the nut orchards at Fresno State and the citrus orchards at the University of California's Lindcove Research and Extension Center.
