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Châtenay-Malabry (FR - 92290), 21 January 2019

EFITA newsletter / 861 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment

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InfoAg International: The gateway for shaping the future of precision agriculture

25 - 27 March 2019 - DUBLIN, Ireland
Position yourself with technology advancements, information and contacts to join the journey from datanomics to agronomics to join the future of farming…

- The power of data
- Automation and its impact on farming
- Data collection and data decisions
- Nutrient management
- Irrigation and fertigation management
- How the influence of precision and digital farming can increase the value of biologicals inputs
- Data standardisation for optimal connectivity
- Precision Ag to help with regulatory compliance
- Improving ROI with adopted technologies
See InfoAg

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Weekly newsletters about ICT in Agriculture in English and French
Both newsletters have around 14000 subscribers.
>>> Last weekly EFITA Newsletters in English (created in 1999)
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>>> Last weekly AFIA Newsletters in French (created 22 years ago in 1997)
Afia Newsletters

Around 15% of subscribers have a look on these newsletters. A rather normal rate…
The archive for the last years are available on the AFIA web site.


Looking ahead to ag tech opportunities, by Willie Vogt

After less than six months, Bayer is moving ahead with new tech after acquisition of Monsanto

John Deere releases video of GridCON electric tractor

John Deere has released some technical details and a video of its upcoming GridCON electric tractor.
See futurefarming.com


Osram presents new near-infrared LED for smart farming

Osram’s new broadband infrared LED is to help farmers plan the best time for harvest.
See futurefarming.com


Gradual switch from diesel to gas and electricity

Hybrid and methane-powered engines seem to be the most logical successors to the diesel engine. The fully electric drive is on the way too, though that is some time off yet. Diesel’s days in agriculture are numbered. We analyse what the near future holds.
See futurefarming.com


Agtech is Useless if We Cannot Engage Farmers, by Connie Bowen and Sarah Nolet

Agtech is useless if we cannot engage farmers. That seems pretty obvious – a product without a customer is of little value, and including customer input into the design and development process is best practice in every industry. But the question of how farmers and the agtech community of entrepreneurs, investors, and accelerators can work together to build great products is much harder to answer.
See agfundernews.com


What Do Women in AgriFood Tech Wish for in 2019? By Louisa Burwood-Taylor

What do women in AgriFood Tech wish for in 2019? We asked members of the Women in AgriFood Tech Slack group and broadly they’re hoping for more collaboration, better tech solutions built with farmers, increased understanding of food’s role in climate change mitigation, more realism in funding, and greater diversity.
See agfundernews.com


The AgriFood Tech Industry’s 2018 Christmas Grinch List, by Lauren Manning

The holidays offer a time to reflect on the closing year as well as a time to consider the things to come. This year, AgFunderNews reached out to the agrifood tech universe to find out what investors and startup execs are hoping to leave behind in 2018 as well as a glimpse of their wish list for 2019.

While some folks relish the holidays, others loathe the long travel days, awkward in-law interactions, and the oh-so-dreaded Christmas music. For our first installment, we asked everyone to tap into their inner Grinch to share their 2018 pet peeves, overplayed tech trends, and the bad habits they hope we banish in 2019.
See agfundernews.com



Canadian eGrocer SPUD Raises $8.2m Pre-IPO Funding for Food-X Urban Delivery, by Emily Payne

“Customers care about sustainability, and we are proud to have partners who recognize that our unique platform offers a better, faster and more efficient fresh, healthy grocery delivery solution,” van Stolk wrote in a press release.
See agfundernews.com


Punching Above Your Wheat: How Israel Became a Hub for Agtech Startups, by OFIR SCHLAM

Even before the state of Israel’s founding, pioneers emphasized cultivating the land through innovative and efficient agricultural work – 70 years after statehood, the fruits of Israelis’ labor in the fields and in the labs have been born out in the country’s flourishing agtech sector.

Amid a new wave of global agtech development, Israel is at the forefront of the innovative solutions enabling farmers and agronomists to optimize crop management and feed the world, with 750 active startups and companies operating in the food tech and agtech sectors. Drawing on its vibrant tech ecosystem, the Startup Nation has harnessed its technological prowess to develop some of agtech’s most successful solutions and companies.

How is this small country punching so high above its weight? And with next-gen farming just beginning to take root, how will the entry of multinational companies into the Israeli market impact local innovation?
See agfundernews.com


Farmer-Centric Accelerator AgLaunch Awards Row Crop Challenge Winner Kopper Kutter, by Lauren Manning

Innova Memphis, a Tennessee-based venture firm, has announced the winner of its first $100,000 Row Crop Challenge powered by AgLaunch as part of the Farm Journal Expo last week. After pitching in the final four, selected from a group of national applicants, Kopper Kutter was voted by a panel of farmers as the lucky inaugural winner.
See agfundernews.com


Is technology the way to improve farming?

The EU is asking all European farmers to take part in a survey to get a better view on the use of precision agriculture technologies in European agriculture. Is technology the way to improve farming?
See futurefarming.com


BASF and VanderSat collaborate to provide farmers with high-precision, field-specific crop optimization

- Microwave sensing from space gives more precise measurement of moisture and temperature in fields
- Integration into BASF's xarvio™ Field Manager enables high-precision forecasting of yield risk
- Collaboration helps farmers make more accurate agronomic decisions
See vandersat.com


Can Precision agriculture be profitable?

Is it worth investing in the technologies? Is it profitable investing in the training and education required to understand and manage PA solutions? - read the article HERE on page 20
See New Ag International

The Efita newsletter is sponsored by:
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Scientists engineer shortcut for photosynthetic glitch, boost crop growth 40%
See news.agropages.com


New Ag International newsletter
See New Ag International


EIP-AGRI seminar: Multi-level strategies for digitising agriculture and rural areas
See EPI-AGRI


Climate change could hit potato industry hard, researchers find

Potato crops do not perform well in high temperatures, according to a new research paper, and that could be a problem as the weather warms with climate change.
See potatonewstoday.com


5 Highly Recommended Farming Tips For The 2019 Farming Seasons
See Agriculture in Ghana


Year in Review (US Agriculture): Dr. David Kohl takes a look at the economics of 2018
See farmprogress.com



Old good days??? (Haying Scene 1884 by Julien Dupre)


Don’t believe the anti-GMO campaign, by G. Padmanaban (The Hindu Newspaper)

GM crops have reduced pesticide use, increased yields and profits, and cause no health hazards
See thehindu.com


'Impressive' results for anti-aging drug that targets damaged 'zombie cells'

The new treatment involves a drug called dasatinib which is already licensed for killing cancer cells in leukaemia patients and quercetin, a common plant pigment.
See ancouversun.com


Making Climate Change Matter By Laurence Tubiana

In a world ravaged by hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves, and droughts, why has it been so hard to garner broad public support for efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels? The answer is all in the messaging.

Paradoxically, the rhetoric of catastrophe we are hearing ever more frequently from worried scientists might – instead of encouraging action – be triggering a human reflex that scholars call “apocalypse fatigue.” Studies show that the brain will avoid or shut out overly apocalyptic or catastrophic discourse, particularly when such themes are not accompanied by talk of solutions. If a problem seems too large to solve by individual action, people will not expend psychic energy dwelling on it.
See project-syndicate.org


Trump vs. Ocasio-Cortez: Who Will Win the Internet?

They both know how to control the narrative. But one of them comes across as a human being and the other as a cartoon bobblehead.
What’s interesting about Mr. Trump’s digital efforts is that even though he is always online, he is not Extremely Online. Rather than fully engaging with the platforms and employing their nifty audio and video tools, he has stuck to text, using his own set of locutions and his own distinctive voice. While at first this made him seem, to many supporters at least, more authentic than the average politician, it is now making him look more and more like a giant cartoon bobblehead. The internet is not making him more of a person.
See NYT

Next Efita
Congress
in Greece in 2019!


2019 Efita International Conference

27-29 June - RHODES - Greece

The topics for the EFITA 2019 conference are detailed below within topic groups.

Topic group 1: “Sensors”
This topic group refers to the development or optimization of sensors and electronics for agricultural applications, such as field scouting and crop parameters monitoring. Particular sub-topics could be:
- New sensors (optical, reflectance, etc.)
- Wireless sensor networks
- Image processing


Agricultural robots are also within this topic, focusing on automation and control technologies to optimise robotic applications in agriculture. Particular sub-topics could be:
- Scouting Robots
- Action Robots
- Machine embedded ICT tools

Topic group 2: “Data”
This topic group is related to all technologies and software that cure data mining, data warehousing, visualisation, knowledge extraction, big data management. Particular sub-topics could be:
- Big data management
- Data mining for agricultural information systems
- Data visualisation
- Data and Knowledge Management for extension services (with real examples)

Other subjects within this topic are interoperability, semantics and knowledge management, such as:
- Metadata and data standards in agriculture
- Thesaurus management, Knowledge management
- Ontologies for agriculture
- Knowledge bases and Knowledge repository services
- Web of Data, Linked Open Data


Topic group 3: “Decision”
This topic group is about modelling for simulation, prediction, crop management, design of ICT-intensive farming systems. Proposed sub-topics are:
- Modelling and Simulation for agricultural production and farming systems
- Weather prediction models for sustainable agricultural production
- Multi-Agent systems

Other “Decision” scientific work is about remote sensing, GIS technologies and spatial management of resources. It includes sub-topics such as:
- Remote Sensing and GIS applications
- Planning tools
- Environmental information systems and Environmental management systems
- ICT applications for natural resources management, including forestry
- ICT applications for sustainable biomass production and use

Finally, ICT applications regarding economical, organizational and business implications in agriculture are also used for business decision making. Such ICT tools are divided in:
- Decision Support Systems for Agriculture
- ICT applications for food chain and logistics
- Traceability tools
- ICT and business
- Rural economies and ICT policies for rural development


Topic group 4: “Action”
This topic group is mainly about design of ICT applications for agriculture and sustainability focusing on precision and knowledge intensive agriculture. It includes sub-topics such as:
- Computer tools for farming
- Models of farming activity
- Scientific computing applied to crop management
-Expert systems in agriculture

This topic group is also about web technologies and networking of actors all along the value chain of agriculture. It includes sub-topics such as:
- On line farm services
- Web applications (clients, devices, server-side)
- Cloud computing applications
- Social Networking, collaborative tools and crowdsourcing
- Tools for e-agribusiness


See efita2019


Definition of "OLD"

1. Just before the funeral services, the undertaker came up to the very elderly widow and asked,
"How old was your husband?"
"98," she replied: "Two years older than me"
"So you're 96," the undertaker commented.
She responded, "Hardly worth going home, is it?"

2. Reporters interviewing a 104-year-old woman:
"And what do you think is the best thing
About being 104?" the reporter asked.
She simply replied, "No peer pressure."

3. I've sure gotten old! I have outlived my feet and my teeth
I've had two bypass surgeries, a hip replacement,
New knees, fought prostate cancer and diabetes
I'm half blind,
Can't hear anything quieter than a jet engine,
Take 40 different medications that
make me dizzy, winded, and subject to blackouts.
Have bouts with dementia.
Have poor circulation;
Hardly feel my hands and feet anymore.
Can't remember if I'm 85 or 92.
Have lost all my friends. But, thank God,
I still have my driver's license.

4. I feel like my body has gotten totally out of shape,
So I got my doctor's permission to
Join a fitness club and start exercising.
I decided to take an aerobics class for seniors.
I bent, twisted, gyrated, jumped up and down, and perspired for an hour. But,
By the time I got my leotards on,
The class was over.

5. An elderly woman decided to prepare her will and told her preacher she had two final requests.
First, she wanted to be cremated, and second,
She wanted her ashes scattered over Wal-Mart.
"Wal-Mart?" the preacher exclaimed.
"Why Wal-Mart?"
"Then I'll be sure my daughters visit me twice a week"

6. My memory's not as sharp as it used to be…
Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.

7. It's scary when you start making the same noises
As your coffee maker.

8. The senility prayer
Grant me the senility to forget the people
I never liked anyway,
The good fortune to run into the ones I do, and
The eyesight to tell the difference.


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Contact: Guy WAKSMAN
E-mail: guy.waksman(a)laposte.net


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