Châtenay-Malabry (FR - 92290), August 01, 2022


EFITA newsletter / 1050 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


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28/07/22

01 - 28/07/22

02 - 28/07/22

Soiltech Wireless Completes $2.5M Funding Round to Increase Product Velocity and Advance Sustainability

The new funding will bolster product offerings to support sustainability and value-added traceability.
See globalagtechinitiative.com


CODA Farm Technologies Unveils Updated FarmHQ Device for Remote Monitoring of Irrigation Reels and Pumps

The device includes enhanced cellular connectivity for even better performance in rural areas and an integrated backup battery.
See globalagtechinitiative.com


A milkmaid with Cattle and Chickens, 1902, Caroline Ellen Watson (1871 - 1947)

03 - 28/07/22

How Producing More with Less Will Drive the Future of Agriculture

Ag has become a high-tech industry and that means farmers will require new skills or will need to hire experts in various fields.
See globalagtechinitiative.com


Highland Ag Solutions Celebrates Two Years with Soli Organic

Implementing Highland Hub has helped Soil Organic strengthen food safety culture.
See globalagtechinitiative.com


Five key findings and a data explorer of the UN World Population Prospects 2022

How many people are there in the world? How many die each year, and how many babies are born?

These are key questions that we need to understand the world around us. The global population dataset is one of our most important at Our World in Data: it underpins nearly every topic we cover.

The UN releases an update of its World Population Prospects every two years. Its latest release was due in 2021 but was delayed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. But the long-awaited dataset has now been released.

In this article, we highlight some of the key findings. We have also published a new Population and Demography Data Explorer, where you can explore this full dataset in detail, for any country in the world.

See ourworldindata.org 28/07/22

FutureFarming.com

> 12-row weeding robot clears weeds autonomously
Dutch company Andela Techniek & Innovatie is developing a machine for robotic weed removal. A prototype - the 12-row ARW-912 - is running on an organic farm in the Netherlands in carrots and onions. The weeding robot is especially designed for the removal of weeds in the row.

> Crop protection: Nanotechnology to drastically reduce use of weed control chemicals
A group of Brazilian scientists uses nanotechnology to reduce the usage of weed control chemicals by a factor of 80.

> Autosteer: New autosteer system from SingularXYZ
The SingularXYZ SAgro100 autosteer system is new to the Future Farming autosteer retrofit kits catalogue. It is available worldwide from $5,900 / €5,650.

> Field robots: Nexus Robotics receives $2.6 million in grant funding
Nexus Robotics Inc. was awarded $2.6M in grant funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC). The money will be used to develop new weeding robots.

> How safe is farmers’ data if FBN goes public?
Many of the FBN-members share data with each other. How might this data be handled if the company goes public?

> Article: Is Big Data a new input for farming?

> Field trials podcast: Reliable, rapid, and reproducible field data

> Expert opinion: Threats from the cloud – equipment and cyber attacks

> Article: Bungulla Farming reaps the benefits of on-farm data

> News: ADM, Farmers Business Network to expand AgTech platform

> News: Pre-planting weather data determines how much spring nitrogen to apply

See futurefarming.com


Highland calves, Loch Restil, 1918, Caroline Ellen Watson (1871 - 1947)

04 - 28/07/22

Tech has made US beef more productive. It can also make it more sustainable, AFN Sponsored Post
Thanks to advances in technology the US beef industry is more productive than it has ever been, providing more pounds of meat from fewer head of cattle. But that trend of innovation needs to continue if beef producers and industry groups are to meet their sustainability and emissions reduction goals.

That was the message from speakers at the ‘Cattle Feeding 101’ virtual event held by the Beef Alliance last month.

The Beef Alliance – which represents companies responsible for over one-third of the US fed cattle supply – organized the event as an opportunity for entrepreneurs, investors, and other stakeholders to learn about the productivity and sustainability challenges facing the cattle feeding industry:

- The main concentration of US cattle feeding operations remains in the Great Plains, with other significant hubs in the Corn Belt, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southwestern states.
- South Dakota has seen the largest growth in cattle on feed over the past decade, with an increase of 125,000 head (39%).
- Washington has seen the greatest decline, dropping 32,000 head (-13%) over the same period.
- Net monthly US feedlot placements in April 2022 stood at just over 1.7 million head, compared to almost 1.8 million a year previously. Average April net US feedlot placements from 2016 to 2020 were around 1.6 million head.
- Cattle on feed numbers are continuing to go up this year due to ongoing drought in the Western US, which has moved east over the past couple of weeks.
- The overall size of the US feedlot sector by number of operations decreased year-on-year, from just over 28,000 operations in 2020 to 27,000 in 2021; while the size of feed yards continues to increase.
At first glance, some of these figures might lead to conclusions of stagnation; but the data shows that the past few decades have seen significant increases in feedlot productivity.
.../...
See agfundernews.com

New data explorer on democracy

With this explorer we seek to make it easier to access and understand data on democracy. We show and explain data from eight leading democracy datasets: their main measures, indicators of specific characteristics, and global and regional overviews.

You can read more about the approaches — and which democracy measure may be best to answer your questions — in this accompanying article.

See ourworldindata.org 28/07/22

AgroFides is unlocking capital for remote Ghanaian farmers with agrifintech, AFN, by Lucy Ngige

Prince Boateng is a former US naval officer of Ghanaian origin. He worked in the international development field working with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under food security and agricultural development-related programs in Africa.

“It struck me that the countries we were working in had fertile ground yet we were shipping food to them,” Boateng tells AFN.

This motivated him to go into the agricultural field seeing that it was also the backbone of many African economies. Together with his co-founders Acheampong Atta-Boateng and Mike Hickey, he founded AgroFides.

AgroFides is an agrifintech startup leveraging AI and agricultural expertise to assess the creditworthiness of small and medium-scaled farmers in Ghana. It is also an intermediary between lenders and farmers to unlock more capital for them.

Like most African countries, Ghana has a large smallholder farmer population, accounting for around 70% of the five million households involved in agriculture.
.../...
See agfundernews.com


Highland Calves, Tay Valley, Perthshire, Carl E. Watson (British)

05 - 28/07/22

Collaboration is key to LatAM AgriFoodTech ecosystem growth, according to GLOCAL panel, AFN Sponsored Post


The Latin American agrifoodtech ecosystem is maturing. In the last few years, Latin America has had exponential growth in the field of innovation as well as in its potential to provide real solutions for the world’s agrifood industry. So much so that during 2021, ‘venture and technology growth investors poured an estimated $19.5 billion into the region,’ and Latin America was the fastest-growing region in the world for venture funding in 2021,’ according to Crunchbase.

It also has a lot more room to grow. Still, more collaboration is needed to maximize the opportunity ahead, agreed participants in a panel organized by GLOCAL, the Latin American agrifoodtech startup investor and accelerator platform. GLOCAL’s GAME CHANGERS final pitch is taking place next week.

More than 120 people worldwide joined the event and had the opportunity to listen to the talk live between GLOCAL and the panelists.
.../...
See agfundernews.com


Future stronger heat waves

01 - 28/07/22

Dry Rhine

02 - 28/07/22

How Taimba’s farm-to-retail marketplace, logistics, cold chain & fintech platform is fighting food waste, AFN, by Lucy Ngige

Kenyan B2B agritech startup Taimba is out to help smallholder farmers find markets for their produce by connecting them directly to retailers. It sources fresh agricultural produce with short shelf lives, from rural farmers who often lack proper storage methods, and delivers them to a range of small-scale retailers in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

Dominique Kavuisya, CEO and founder of Taimba, created the platform after identifying how much food was wasted in rural parts of the country due to poor food preservation methods and a lack of ready markets around harvest time.

>>> Middlemen and low productivity
Food wastage aside, the smallholders were at the mercy of middlemen who undercut them on pricing for their produce.

“In between [farmers and retailers], you’re looking at five brokers or even more sometimes. There’s a broker who goes to buy from the farmer. Then there’s one who provides the transport. Then, to sell to local markets, there’s a fee one has to pay,” Kavuisya tells AFN.

In turn, end consumers in urban centers have to bear high food costs, while farmers receive meager, delayed payments.

Kavuisya wanted to create a platform that could link rural farmers more directly with buyers, shortening the agricultural supply chain by eliminating these middlemen. And Taimba automates, streamlines, and makes trading transparent so that farmers can follow up on their sales via the mobile app.

“The opportunity was that if you leverage technology in the food supply chain, you’re able to provide a platform that ensures transparency and empowers farmers so that they do not need to worry about where they’re going to sell their produce,” Kavuisya says.

>>> Retailer inconvenience
.../...
See agfundernews.com


Work days at risk, Historical

03 - 28/07/22

Work days at risk, 2050

04 - 28/07/22

Local food isn’t the climate solution you want it to be, GreenBiz, by Theresa Lieb

Local food is better for the environment. That’s one of the most stubborn myths when it comes to sustainable food systems and one of the bubbles I’ve been trying to burst when talking to people about their eating habits. Instead of just shopping local, I’ve been rallying them to think about what they eat (more veg, less meat) and how it’s produced because transport is only responsible for about 6 percent of global food emissions.

Then, earlier this month, Bloomberg reported on a new study published by researchers from the University of Sydney, Beijing Technology and Business University and Wuhan University in the renowned scientific journal Nature Food claiming that food transportation emissions are up to 7.5 times higher than previously estimated. The article also highlighted that "fruits and vegetables are particularly carbon-intensive to ship due to their bulk and the need for refrigeration during transport."

My colleagues and friends loved this news — the article landed in my inbox at least a dozen times. Eating local meat seemed a much more agreeable climate solution than switching to a plant-rich diet. I’m sorry to burst the bubbles once again, but when looking closely at the study’s findings, they don’t support the headline-making statements about the benefits of local food and the drawbacks of eating vegetables.
.../...
See greenbiz.com


Near Mochan, sheep on a mountainside, by William Robert Charles Watson (1873 – 1928)

06 - 28/07/22

Sustainability is here to stay. These two ag agencies are stepping up, by AGDAILY Reporters, July 18, 2022

Amid the ever-evolving challenges of providing a consumer-friendly, sustainable food supply, farmers and food companies often face different pressures while working towards the same end goals. To better accomplish these goals, the United Soybean Board is partnering with The Center for Food Integrity to open conversations and begin collaboration between the two groups.
.../...
According to a 2021 Cargill survey, more than half of consumers on a global scale will choose a package item that boasts a sustainability claim over one that does not. In the U.S., 37 percent of consumers said that sustainability labeling would influence their buying decisions.

To address these issues, the United Soybean Board has partnered with The Center for Food Integrity to begin conversations. Invited to the table are soybean farmers, food sustainability experts, NGOs, academia, and others to a series of virtual round tables and public webinars. These meetings aim to produce a broader understanding of how sustainability can be achieved, the challenges all sides face, and how tradeoffs should be carefully weighed.

Both organizations hope this type of collaboration will help ensure the benefits of modern production practices are understood and considered in food sourcing decisions. The ultimate goal of the collaborations is that farmers and food companies can move forward to protect agriculture’s social license so farmers can continue to use proven practices and technologies and continue to innovate and improve.
See agdaily.com


Cattle on a Cornish coast, William Watson (British, 1831-1921)

07 - 28/07/22

Though inflation

05 - 28/07/22

The global population is projected to peak at around 10.4 billion in 2086

The world population has increased rapidly over the last century.  When will it come to an end?

Previous versions of the UN World Population Prospects showed a significant slowdown in population growth, with very slow growth – almost reaching a plateau – by the end of the century. In its previous release, it projected that the world population would be around 10.88 billion in 2100, and would not yet have peaked.

In this new release, the UN projects that the global population will peak before the end of the century – in 2086 at just over 10.4 billion people.1

There are several reasons for this earlier, and lower, peak. One is that the UN expects fertility rates to fall more quickly in low-income countries compared to previous revisions. It also expects less of a ‘rebound’ in fertility rates across high-income countries in the second half of the century.

See ourworldindata.org 28/07/22

The global population is projected to peak at around 10.4 billion in 2086

The world population has increased rapidly over the last century.  When will it come to an end?

Previous versions of the UN World Population Prospects showed a significant slowdown in population growth, with very slow growth – almost reaching a plateau – by the end of the century. In its previous release, it projected that the world population would be around 10.88 billion in 2100, and would not yet have peaked.

In this new release, the UN projects that the global population will peak before the end of the century – in 2086 at just over 10.4 billion people.1

There are several reasons for this earlier, and lower, peak. One is that the UN expects fertility rates to fall more quickly in low-income countries compared to previous revisions. It also expects less of a ‘rebound’ in fertility rates across high-income countries in the second half of the century.

See ourworldindata.org 28/07/22

Strong dollar (1)

06 - 28/07/22

Strong dollar (2)

07 - 28/07/22

Apple, the end of one dream?

08 - 28/07/22

A first thought for today

I hold one share in the corporate earth and am uneasy about the management.
E.B. WHITE, writer (1899-1985)


A second thought for today

It is never my custom to use words lightly. If twenty-seven years in prison have done anything to us, it was to use the silence of solitude to make us understand how precious words are and how real speech is in its impact on the way people live and die.
Nelson MANDELA, activist, South African president, Nobel laureate (1918-2013)


A third thought for today

To be able to say how much you love is to love but little.
PETRARCH, scholar and poet (1304-1374)


Chart tracking the prices of US goods and services relative to inflation

28/07/22

Sri Lanka is a warning against green utopianism

Sri Lanka is in the midst of an unprecedented economic crisis. Inflation has climbed to over 50 percent, and the country fell into a state of emergency after rioters stormed the presidential palace.

One major reason for the collapse was President Rajapaksa’s disastrous fertilizer ban, which devastated Sri Lankan agriculture.

The foolish decision was inspired by an insidious green utopianism that is based on, among other things, a profound ignorance about the causes of human progress against hunger.
See humanprogress.org

On the Machno, North Wales, Walter James Watson (1877 - 1963)

08 - 28/07/22

World's oldest tree still growing near the Norwegian-Swedish border, by Bård Amundsen

The nearly 10 000-year-old spruce tree is only five metres tall, but it began to grow just after the last ice age ended.

Not many years ago, Norwegian schoolchildren learned that spruce trees came to Norway from the east between 2 000 and 3 000 years ago.

But ten years ago, researchers at Umeå University in Sweden discovered a tree up on Fulufjället – in Sweden just east of Trysil municipality in Norway. The tree turned out to be 9 500 years old.

The researchers decided to name the tree after Tjikko, the dog that was with them on the trip when they found the spruce specimen. The tree was thus named Old Tjikko.

New DNA studies carried out by researchers at Uppsala University now show that the very first spruce trees may have come to southern Sweden as early as 14 700 years ago.

In other words, the spruce put down roots here just after the ice from the last ice age had started retreating.
.../...

28/07/22 See sciencenorway.no

The Efita newsletter is sponsored by:

GM rice produces 40% more grain

Researchers have given rice a 40% yield boost by introducing a second copy of a single gene. The gene, known as OsDREB1C, encodes proteins that control other genes involved in photosynthesis and nitrogen use.

Tweaks to the genetically modified (GM) rice improved photosynthesis, sped up flowering and helped the plant to absorb nitrogen more efficiently, resulting in larger, more abundant grains. Researchers say that the same yield boost could be accomplished by editing the plant’s own genes.

This process tends to be more lightly regulated and is more palatable to some consumers than transgenic engineering.
See science.org


Carbon emissions: the end of European dirty industries?

09 - 28/07/22

10 - 28/07/22

Self-driving tractors rolling out in California could fuel the future of farming, by Jiovanni Lieggi

One of the world's first EV self-driving tractors is being used on farms in California.

Some California farmers are going a little greener by opting for eco-friendly tools and transitioning to electric-powered, driverless, tractors. The company rolling these high-tech tractors out, Monarch Tractor, says this can help farmers save money, increase production, and help with the agriculture industry's growing labor shortage.

"It’s sustainability in action and its evolution of the human species," fifth-generation winegrower and farmer Karl Wente said. He's been helping Monarch Tractor test the tractors on his farm. "It used to be a big tractor where you can see the diesel combusting out, and now you just have this quiet electric vehicle running through. It's a natural direction," Wente explained.

California has nearly 70,000 farms, and farmers produce billions of pounds of fresh foods every year. Though, every year farmers face challenges, including record-high inflation rates and worsening drought on the West Coast. "Mother Nature bats last, and no two seasons are ever the same," Wente said.

This electric tractor could help with those problems farmers might face, especially by reducing the overall cost of production and growing, the company explained.

"Farmers can now save more money by knowing exactly where to target their resources," Monarch Tractor CEO and Founder Praveen Penmetsa said.

"What this tractor brings with the whole data side is exactly what’s been done to the food. Not only that, but the insights on the farming operations can help farmers to limit their inputs and control their costs," Monarch Tractor Co-founder Mark Schwager said.

Rather than having a driver, the tractor has a remote operator who tracks and receives alerts in real-time. "There is always a human in the loop," Schwager explained.
.../...
See foxbusiness.com


Sheep in winter sunset, Arthur Sydney Watson 1881 - 1931

09 - 28/07/22

10 - 28/07/22