Innovation Trends: Smartphones and Agriculture

Jeff Lindsay — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 15:47:39 +0000

One of the interesting trends in emerging nations is the rapid spread of mobile phones without first moving to landlines. Millions of people who don’t have landlines and may not have the infrastructure for them are able to benefit from cell phones. As cell phones increasingly become smart, offering a variety of apps and services, their smartphones can change the way people work and live. That includes the way they farm, including they way they apply pesticides, apply water, manage the soil, and harvest crops. Look to agriculture and the related fields of water and soil management for added value in coming years.

Lindsay Corporation (no relation) recently announced a new cell phone application to help farmers track and control their automated irrigation systems such as the Zimmatic® system. Here’s an excerpt:

Lindsay Corporation, maker of Zimmatic® irrigation systems, announces the introduction of FieldNET Mobile—pivot control for smartphones. The new feature allows growers to fully control and monitor their irrigation pivots anywhere through the convenience of smartphones.

“FieldNET Mobile provides a labor-saving innovation with the convenience of web-enabled phones,” says Reece Andrews, GrowSmart™ product manager at Lindsay. “With full control and monitoring from anywhere, growers are more efficient with their time and always know the status of their irrigation systems.”

FieldNET Mobile’s graphical interface supports most industry-leading smartphones, including the iPhone®, Droid® and BlackBerry®, according to Andrews.

FieldNET is an award-winning web-based irrigation management system. With the addition of FieldNET Mobile, growers can view the current status of all their pivots in one list, receive system alerts, arrange pivots by predefined groups, view water usage reports and receive a history of pivot runtimes.

Innovators are already considering many other smartphone-enabled opportunities for improving the way we farm and manage water around the world. We look forward to seeing what we can do to further improve the quality of life through better agriculture practices enabled by the power of smartphones. Stay tuned!

What do you see as future applications of smartphones in agriculture? Interested in working with us to explore the IP landscape and innovation opportunities here? Give us a call!

Coffee growers in Ethiopia are turning to green solutions

Cheryl Perkins — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:29:21 +0000

Ethiopian coffee growers are looking at green innovation to grow their business.

Aid agency Oxfam International is sponsoring a project to help coffee growers in one region of Ethiopia use more sustainable growing methods, teaching environmentally-friendly processing to reduce waste and cut water usage by 98.5 percent.

Photo courtesy of Oxfam

That’s welcome news of hope for coffee growers, who face increasing challenges as the climate changes. According to SciDev.net., coffee is the world’s most valuable tropical export and is produced by 20 million or so small farming families. But the future outlook for coffee growers is bleak. Coffee needs a certain climate to grow well, and as temperatures rise, unpredictable dry spells and periods of heavy rain are expected to negatively impact coffee production.

Oxfam America is increasingly investing in coffee quality improvement through greener processing. Last year the organization launched a project to support coffee quality improvement by funding the purchase of an eco-friendly coffee washing station.

As a result, coffee growers are expected to increase their income by selling washed coffee while addressing environmental pollution related to the conventional coffee processing method.

Innovationedge » Global Food Crisis

Innovation Trends: Smartphones and Agriculture

Coffee growers in Ethiopia are turning to green solutions