ACADEMIA Letters

Digital agriculture adoption: The data

journey…implemented
Marco Brini

The agriculture sector is experiencing a disruptive shift in practices due to the convergence
of several digital technologies enabling significant inputs reduction (water, fertilizers, pesti-
cides, manpower) while reducing agronomic risk, food waste, prices uncertainty and more.
Digital Agriculture is a 3 stages process: (1) collecting and digitalizing information about
the field (microclimate conditions, soil physical and chemical states, irrigation patterns,…),
(2) aggregating and comparing them with agronomic models (modelized experiences) and
historic time series (raw events), other sources (supply chain states, pricing expectations,…),
(3) providing recommendations to the farmer (crop variety to choose, fertilization, seeding
time, irrigation pattern, treatments against pest and diseases, harvest time…). Along several
successful pilots proving the ROI of digital agriculture, failures also exist. Key is the imple-
mentation of Digital Agriculture. This paper present a successful implementation of Digital
Agriculture along with some implementation recommendation.
Combining expertise and resources of large Switzerland corporations and research institu-
tions, a large pilot project was delivered in Brazil from 2013 to 2018 adopting and challenging
digital technologies to prove their value added to agronomic practices.
The above images offer a view of the 3 areas involved in the pilot.
The team adopted several digital technologies which proved game changer in defining a
mix of agronomic actions. The results showed that is possible and enables high yields of up
to 3000 kilograms of dry beans per hectare compared to the 500 kg/ha in average translating
in a 600% yield increase while saving up to 50% water. Additional pilots managed by the
author further proved the benefits of Digital Agriculture on reducing around 30% of pesticides
treatments (saving time & material costs along with reduced pollution) while reducing the
agronomic risk as well.

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Marco Brini, mrcbrini@gmail.com

Citation: Brini, M. (2021). Digital agriculture adoption: The data journey…implemented. Academia Letters,
Article 2984. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2984.

1
Digital Agriculture revolution is a Knowledge revolution in agri-
culture
Digital tools reached a level of maturity that allow finally to fill the “digital divide” among
agriculture and other sectors where digital technologies have already been successfully im-
plemented. The convergence combination of technologies such as smart field sensors, new
local RF communication protocols for data fetching, smartphones, new cloud tools, is what
the agricultural sector was waiting for.
But…these data should become information to create value. In other words, the above
digital tools allow the creation of a data lake regarding the farm. Without a context they will
be just like a dead lake with no value but costs.
The context (in ICT jargon: metadata and agronomic models) is what translates data
into information. This is the ultimate goal of the happening digital revolution in agriculture,
that should indeed be named “Knowledge revolution” in agriculture. The digital tools allow
data coming from diverse sources to “meet in the digital world”; an appropriate processing
translate them into knowledge about the field that has never been possible so far. In addition,
the process will self-sustain and self-improve as the more information will be generated the
“wiser” the system will be: AI and Robots are the next thing (currently entering the market).

Digital agriculture in 3 steps

1. Data fetching
Digital Agriculture “main currency” is data. Such data have always been available, but with
several limitations. For instance, having a constant curve of soil moisture a 10cm, 30cm, 50cm
depth collected every few hectares is possible even without smart soil moisture sensors, but at
which labor cost? Practically unsustainable, therefore these potentially available data aren’t
collected. New multi level smart soil sensors can detect soil humidity at different levels and
sensing the data to the cloud each hour allowing irrigation calibration accordingly. Benefits?
Saving water and improving productivity.
Other data collected (according to the crop types) are: soil temperature, air temperature,
air humidity (locally), leaf wetness, solar radiation, wind speed and direction. More advanced
automatic smart sensors are: dendrometers to measure the plants trunk circumference (to
the point of detecting lymph flows), leaves potentiometers (to evaluate plant stresses), NPK
soil sensors…In addition, tractors and other machinery are becoming more and more densely
equipped with sensors, some of them to improve operations while others collecting precious

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Marco Brini, mrcbrini@gmail.com

Citation: Brini, M. (2021). Digital agriculture adoption: The data journey…implemented. Academia Letters,
Article 2984. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2984.

2
data for broader agronomic evaluation.
These data, require local communication, not to be underestimated especially in remote
locations.

2. Data formatting, pre-processing and processing

Once data are available on the cloud, the data journey has just started. Very often the diversity
of the technologies used for the collection along with missing data standards are transforming
a “data opportunity” into a “data mess” with no value at all.
Data should be comparable; in other words they should be on the same format. As an
analogy think about a team of engineers required to execute a task but each one of them
talking a different language!
After data format uniformity, pre-processing is required. The reason? Never fully trust
a sensor. What if the data collected are wrong? What if it loses calibration? It happens, I
have several personal experiences. The consequences are easily understandable and can be
summarizes ad “junk in, junk out”. Indeed, as the data are required to take decisions, if wrong
data are in, bad decisions are out.
Finally processing can happen. Processing allow to benefit from the data, transforming
them into full knowledge. It may happen primarily in three ways:

1. Human-driven: in this case the agronomist has full control, taking all decisions but
having a centralized, complete real-time view of what is happening in the fields, along
with historical values. This approach is currently the most used.

2. Semi-automatic: agronomists can set models to the collected data according to their
experience, or receive them from a digital solution provider. Such models can provide
real-time recommendations on all major agronomic decisions. The agronomist has the
last word. A combination of this approach and the above by experience is currently the
best.

3. Automatic-operation based on manual setting: the agronomist can pre-set automatic ir-
rigation systems with specific algorithms allowing the systems to operate autonomously
where sensors provide information and the actuators of the irrigation system act ac-
cordingly. Another example is using agronomic recommendation for treatments where
sensors provide data about local environmental conditions, models process them and
the recommendation is followed without any questioning. This approach allows a full
automation of the farm. By experience given the current state of the art of digital agri-
culture, human supervision is still recommended.

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Marco Brini, mrcbrini@gmail.com

Citation: Brini, M. (2021). Digital agriculture adoption: The data journey…implemented. Academia Letters,
Article 2984. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2984.

3
 4. Coming next: the foreseeable not-so-distant future is an evolution of (III.) where AI
and Robots will be in the loop. Within the COCOA mentioned project AI has been
successfully already tested, proving that in principle can further help. What is missing?
Large data lake, with history, uniformly formatted and clear context defined. In other
words: the AI tool is ready and may deliver value to agronomic decision support, but
data should come first.

5. Robots are already a reality with self-driving tractors & other machinery. More are un-
der development and test to perform the most diverse activities. As soon as agri-robots
will be more mature (happening soon), adoption will speed up (COVID is helping)
allowing economy of scale and exponential adoption.

3. Agronomic recommendations and adaptive management

Although most of the current digital agriculture solutions tend to stop the data journey at the
previous step, an additional step should happen to fully benefit from the “digitalization of the
data”: tracking the actions to allow the adaptation of the models for the next decisions.
This fundamental step is partly covered the approach “III. Automatic-operation based on
manual setting” previously described. But even this approach in my experience in the best
cases limits itself to data collection of the actions executed automatically. The adaptation is
never considered.
Even AI-driven proposed solution in the majority of the cases aren’t considering 2 the
self-adaptation but just focus on historic time series.
Adaptive Management3 (AM) is a well know decision making process system success-
fully implemented in several applications. Following its principle within Digital Agriculture
significantly increases the “data value” increasing ROI.
Tracking the agronomic actions, is a prerequisite to enable AM in the described process.
These actions will produce additional time-series (data) that can be compared with the avail-
able one defining a better context and understanding both for current and future seasons.

ROI-tech-oriented: from “tech centric” to implementation strategy

The digital agriculture is far from being a “tool ready to use”, even far from a “set of solutions
ready to use”. It’s clear to all sector players (big and small) that digital agriculture holds great
competitive advantages and that it will become a “must have” very soon. But that awareness
shouldn’t lead to unplanned adoption. On the contrary, the key is to define an implementation
strategy.

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Marco Brini, mrcbrini@gmail.com

Citation: Brini, M. (2021). Digital agriculture adoption: The data journey…implemented. Academia Letters,
Article 2984. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2984.

4
 As within Digital Agriculture fall several diversified (and often not compatible) technolo-
gies and products, they should just be seen as “tools”, nothing more, nothing less. Some
tool may be required, some may be a “nice to have”, some may be a “must have”, but that
depends on the type of farm, objectives, location, current practices, budget availability…In
other words: Digital agriculture it’s a process involving a multitude of technologies (more
or less interoperable) that IF appropriately combined within the existing agronomic process
CAN really deliver high value.
Keeping constantly in mind that Digital Agriculture is a process, a farm interested to
adopting it should define a step-by-step implementation strategy. Even the implementation
strategy should be adapted to the type & size of farm. Following an example of implementa-
tion strategy for a large farm:

1. Assessment of the current situation: existing practices, staff know- how/education/attitude

level, technology readiness, stakeholder’s readiness,…

2. Goals definition (according to budget: time & costs): comparing the above with clearly
defined goals, reasonable expectations,…Priorities to focus: before even thinking about
technologies, the key is to identify where the maximum benefit can be provided at mini-
mum effort, in other words the current agronomic process should be split into modules,
each of them should be analyzed and ranked to identify the most critical ones; this is
really the key step.

3. Technologies vs. identified process modules: once identified the process modules “where
to focus” an assessment of available technologies has to be performed according to the
goals, budget, readiness and existing technologies used;

4. Technologies short list: next is defining a short list of technologies that can be imple-
mented based on their costs (real and hidden), interoperability with the existing and
among themselves and the priorities. Ranking the technologies has to be done compar-
ing costs with expected benefits.

5. Technologies KPI definition: before taking a final decision on what to buy, clear KPIs
have to be defined with the seller, for each technology expected to adopt! If there is no
idea about how to measure the benefit of a technology into the existing process, either
some additional analysis has to be done or the technology shouldn’t be implemented.
The most important KPI should be the BEP (Break-Even-Point) on that specific tool
and its impact on the overall digital agriculture adoption strategy.

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Marco Brini, mrcbrini@gmail.com

Citation: Brini, M. (2021). Digital agriculture adoption: The data journey…implemented. Academia Letters,
Article 2984. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2984.

5
 6. Implementation plan: once modules, technologies and KPI have been defined, it’s time
to define an implementation plan that would include: purchase, technologies adapta-
tions (often full interoperability isn’t there), TRAINING, learning curve, implementa-
tion step-by-step, KPI constant monitoring,

7. IMPLEMENTATION: although it sounds obvious often (over)enthusiasm motivate to

reverse this step-by-step order starting with implementation ending up in assessing if
we even should have done it in the first place! Now, implementation is a process in
itself, it should follow

8. the previously defined plan, while being ready to adapt it and ideally having an external
(trusted) consultant that can help to guide the process, until the NEW PROCESS is
proven, fully established and we have achieved the expected benefits. Then and only
than we have a new process “digital agriculture driven”.

While for a “full-proof” Digital Implementation Strategy, for someone that is serious about
Digital Agriculture implementation and heading to long term high profits increment, then it’s
wise investing quite some time and resources in the above implementation process.

Academia Letters, August 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Marco Brini, mrcbrini@gmail.com

Citation: Brini, M. (2021). Digital agriculture adoption: The data journey…implemented. Academia Letters,
Article 2984. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2984.