Drastic climate change and overpopulation have made traditional farming practices unsustainable. Even more economically prosperous countries suffer from ever-increasing household food insecurity.
In Canada, for instance one in six families have difficulty affording the food to keep up a healthy and energetic lifestyle, and the situation is getting worse yearly.
Food insecurity is growing rapidly global problem this challenges agricultural businesses to search out radically recent ways to provide crops efficiently: with less waste, less pesticides and faster time to market, while reducing their energy footprint.
Since traditional outdoor farming cannot meet these challenges, indoor farming techniques reminiscent of Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA) change into the topic of particular interest. However, they require appropriate computer support. Such computer-aided methods and tools are developed in our laboratory for: Sustainable Systems and Methods (SSM) at McMaster University.
Digital twins
CEA is a way of growing plants in an isolated environment, artificially controlled by complex HVAC (heating, ventilation and air con) machines, irrigation and lighting systems, in addition to an array of sensors measuring environmental conditions.
Thanks to automation, controlled environments provide higher efficiency and quality than traditional farms, while also reducing waste.
Because these improvements involve increased complexity, finding the optimal growth strategy—that’s, the sequence of environmental conditions that stimulates growth at essentially the most appropriate rate and reduces energy consumption—is especially difficult.
This is one other complex challenge that requires continuous monitoring of the environment, making decisions in real time and really precise control of the environment – tasks that exceed the bounds of human capabilities.
Computer support, e.g digital twinscan play a crucial role.
Digital twins are digital representations of physical objects, people or processes. They support decision-making through high-fidelity, real-time simulations of the dual physical system and are sometimes equipped with autonomous control capabilities.
Digital twins are typically utilized in precision agriculture monitoring and controlling environmental conditions to stimulate plant growth at an optimal and sustainable rate.
Digital twins provide a live dashboard to look at environmental conditions within the growing area, and with various autonomy, digital twins can do that directly control the environment.
Reducing energy consumption – or slightly, improving the crop-to-energy ratio – is considered one of the plain goals of precision agriculture facilities, reminiscent of heating and cooling the ability consumes lots of energy.
Digital twins may also be used designing recent greenhouses. For example, a digital twin that has been collecting data in a greenhouse for a very long time might be used for experimental purposes when designing a brand new greenhouse.
Is it economically feasible?
The development of digital twins and improving the digital maturity of agricultural enterprises are the important cost drivers related to the adoption of digitally enhanced CEA.
The costs related to the event of a digital twin mainly concern, amongst others: hardware components and software development. Homemade solutions, experimenting with low cost devices and regularly expanding functionality – yes good first steps and assist you to adopt the fitting way of fascinated about digitalization.
However, skilled plantations require industry-class subsystems, that are in a totally different league when it comes to costs, and their use requires rigorously prepared organizational digital strategy.
(AppHarvest via AP)
Agriculture belongs to least digitized sectors, and digital maturity is an absolute prerequisite for the adoption of digital twins. Consequently, costs related to digital maturity often overshadow technical costs in smart agriculture.
An organization undergoing early digitization will need to think about choosing a cloud provider, establish an information strategy, and acquire plenty of software licenses, simply to name a number of. some critical challenges.
Organizational costs are difficult to estimate, but they will make an organization’s economic prospects bleak. This is a very painful stage of growth that requires appropriate consultation.
Were recent success stories industrial-academic collaboration that has helped with ongoing digitalization efforts in agricultural corporations.
What’s next?
The need for food security and sustainable production is as urgent as ever.
In the face of dramatic climate change and forest fires across Canada, extreme air pollution in Europeongoing energy crisis and continuous population growth, food self-sufficiency is considered one of humanity’s most significant goals.
Meeting second sustainable development goal United Nations General Assembly – eliminating world hunger by 2030 – will require a whole paradigm shift in agriculture.
One technique to achieve this ambitious goal is advanced digitalization and digital twins. There are still hurdles to beat before we get there, but as hardware and computing power prices proceed to fall, digitally driven smart farming is becoming a reality.