Gathering data and using data is the key to future success in the fresh produce industry – The next revolution in the fresh produce sector. Working with real-time and historic data will allow farmers to grow and harvest more efficiently – reducing costs for pest control, saving money on irrigation and it will lead to better predictions about demand and pricing.
We want our readers in the fresh produce industry understand the world of ‘big data’ and the future developments better. Specifically we want you to understand where data is available and how industry members can use it to enhance their product and their efficiency.
We talked to Richard Jones, CTO at LINKFRESH about the specific solutions at Linkfresh and his view about future developments. Listen to PART I of our interview with Richard Jones here. Learn more about Linkfresh in their brochure for the horticulture industry.
While a lot of data is technically available there are not many systems in place which can consolidate and analyze the vast amount of data available from satellites, drones, harvesting and sorting equipment, cool chain and logistics infrastructure and the retail business. Mr. Jones talked to us about Odata, a solution to consolidate data from many different sources. Standardization will be very important in the future as most solutions in the horticulture business like sorting machines use proprietary data. To be able to use this kind of data in connection with other applications like data from harvesting machines, cool storage or others solution providers have to ‘translate’ the data into a common language. Combining data will offer a lot of possibilities. Richard Jones names a few.
Richard Jones:
“Putting the latest harvest and weather data in the hand of someone who is out in the field on the iPad means that they can see at a glance where they should put more water on or turning soil or put some irrigation channels… They got a chance to react more quickly to sort out the potential problems and fix them before they become real issue.”
LINKFRESH is a supply chain solution for fresh produce growers, packers, shippers, importers, exporters and food service firms to manage production, distribution and marketing through to the point of sale. The applications seamlessly integrate with Microsoft Dynamics® to allow gathering data and see robust transaction details where they happen – in real time.
The interview is part of our ongoing series about horticulture big data. Please also see our interview with Prof. Sukkarieh Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics who talked to us about the issues around big data and ownership of big data in his recent interview with https://fruitworldmedia.com/. He takes the question one step further by asking who will own agriculture in general in the future: The growers, the supermarkets, the seed companies, the crop protection companies? Sukkarieh makes it clear that the question of data ownership will be vital for the industry in the future.
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