The year 2020 was declared the International Year of Plant Health by the FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. The goal is to raise awareness globally about how protecting plant health can help stop hunger, reduce poverty, protect the environment, and stimulate economic development.

Because plants are the source of our oxygen and food, we must find ways to keep them healthy and protect the environment in which they (as well as us) live and grow. A FAO estimate says that globally, about 40% of food crops are lost annually due to diseases and pests left untreated or with an inappropriate approach. In this way, in a few years we will be able to face a lack of food for millions of people, but also with the primary source of income for farmers.

Maintaining and ensuring plant health is a complex process. In addition to fertilizers or plant protection products, software solutions play an increasingly important role in agriculture, helping farmers obtain healthy and quality crops, by carefully monitoring weather and soil conditions, as well as monitoring their health. of crops and the application of fertilizers and pesticides only when intervention is absolutely necessary.

A complete platform for innovative agro solutions

The use of intelligent software solutions in agriculture helps to increase the yield of the farm by making the best use of the resources that farmers have at hand and by increasing the level of quality and health of the crops. Innovative software solutions offer a competitive advantage and a sustainable approach.

The innovative cloud solutions that BITSoftware makes available to all actors in agriculture helps with advanced crop monitoring and farm management by efficiently managing all farm activities, from planning, executing and tracking agricultural work, with the allocation of resources, forecasting treatments to be applied, real-time alerts, inspections and observations, machinery management, up to the supply, stocks, sales, financial management and P&L reports on farms, plots, works and activities.

FieldBook AgriApps, part of the agricultural solutions package, is a powerful tool that can operate on the basis of global scenarios and a system based on AI and Machine Learning, which, as it gains data and experience, will easily identify needs and challenges. from agriculture. With a powerful GIS mapping and geolocation engine, the solution helps manage, monitor and plan agricultural operations for several plots and lands, which can be marked on well-defined categories, each with its own type of plantation, soil, treatments and other operations. FieldBook AgriApps offers monitoring and alerting for predictability of operations, especially when it comes to harvesting, sprinkling or treating plantations. Based on an AI-based engine, by uploading an image base with possible problems, diseases, deficiencies or other plantation problems, FieldBook AgriApps can quickly identify the problem and the solution to the problem, just by simply moving the farmer to photograph the plants. Then, the solution has the ability to retrieve information from a large sensor base of IoT devices, such as those mounted in weather stations, on the ground, in power tanks or other equipment, to correlate and monitor activities and operations, releasing real-time alerts. Additionally, FieldBook AgriApps connects to multiple weather stations to provide real-time weather information, providing accurate data and eventual alerts. FieldBook AgriApps can also be integrated with third-party GPS systems to obtain a wider range of data. There is also the possibility that the application can retrieve data provided by drones flying over farms.

Benefits for farmers

• Appropriate crop management based on accurate information, whether we are talking about weather conditions from various weather services or weather stations, previous treatments, diseases or pests observed through images transmitted by drones or information from the field.
• Saving time and making faster decisions that influence the health of crops and their productivity.
• Preserving the quality of the soil by avoiding the compaction of the soil, reducing the irrational work of the land (numerous works, in the degree of inadequate humidity or with inadequate machinery).
• Obtaining rich crops and healthy agricultural products by applying the right treatments only when needed and in the required quantities
  

Who are the beneficiaries of these innovative solutions for agriculture

The first beneficiaries are farmers by improving production by efficiently managing the crops. IoT & Agricultural equipment providers can also benefit from BITSoftware solutions by adding significant value to the services they provide to farmers. Providers of agricultural inputs can expand their range of solutions and strengthen their market position by adding software solutions.

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Ready to learn more? Contact our team of specialists and let us find the solution that suits you.

Photo source: European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization‍