Due to war-torn crops, Ukrainian farmers are turning to satellite internet. Similar data-gathering technologies, used by kyiv and its allies to gain a strategic battlefield advantage over Moscow, are helping farmers maximize yields while dealing with massive shortages, from fertilizers to seeds.
They notably use OneSoil Map, a data visualization and mapping solution that allows agricultural companies, researchers and governments to visualize huge global datasets and observe trends in agricultural production around the world. entire.
This technology is now playing into the hands of Ukrainian farmers who hope to avoid disaster. The technology allows farmers to remotely monitor crop status, quickly detect problems in the field, work with productivity zones, and apply variable-rate fertilizers and seeds, helping to increase yields and strengthen sustainable agricultural practices.
A widely used technology
Ukraine, one of the world’s largest breadbaskets, stands out as an area of particular interest for OneSoil, as well as an important test of the technology’s ability to help in truly challenging circumstances. “OneSoil has a strong connection to Ukraine,” confirms Morten Schmidt, CEO of OneSoil, interviewed by ZDNet.
“We created and validated our technologies in cooperation with Ukrainian partners. The ground truth data used to train our models initially came from agricultural partners, one of the 10 largest farms in Ukraine. The OneSoil app is used by over 50,000 users in Ukraine, we continue to monitor the situation closely. »
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, local farmers have experienced a shortage of all necessary inputs, including fertilizers, seeds and chemicals. So-called variable-rate technology, which uses satellite and other data to interpret how and when crops are likely to thrive, allows these scarce resources to be redistributed more efficiently across fields.
A newcomer to agriculture
As Oleksii Misyura, head of R&D at IMC, one of the biggest agricultural players in the country, explains, “We didn’t sow many fields this year because of the war. There are empty tanks and shells lying around everywhere; some fields are mined. In such conditions, precision agriculture makes it possible to optimize resources”.
The company therefore used the satellite data to calculate the savings it could achieve by redistributing fertilizer between the different productivity zones, reducing the rate in some field areas and increasing it in others in order to reduce the input consumption and increase profits.
Affordable precision agriculture is a relative newcomer to an age-old industry. One of the big benefits, beyond the horrors of wartime production management, could be a milder impact on land and the environment. Agriculture generates about 24% of all greenhouse gas emissions. That’s more than all planes, cars, boats and other vehicles combined. Yet, at the same time, farmers are among those most at risk from the effects of climate change.
Source: ZDNet.com