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Châtenay-Malabry (FR - 92290), January 24, 2021 EFITA newsletter / 1023 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment Do not miss the Virus Jokes in English and French The informatique-agricole.org site now offers you the possibility of subscribing the RSS feeds of its two newsletters See RSS feeds to implement to ensure that you continue to receive this newsletter To unsubscribe this newsletter, please contact me directely: guy.waksman(a)laposte.net if this link Unsubscribe does not work. Please note that I changed the presentation of the links that are embedded in the name of the web service. To correspond with me (GW), please use this address: guy.waksman(a)laposte.net To subscribe the efita newsletter (please ask your friends and colleagues to test this link) Efita Newsletters subscription Before computers: Case Tractor 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) Efita Newsletters >>> Last weekly AFIA Newsletters in French (created more than 20 years ago in 1997) Afia Newsletters >>> Statistics for the last efita newsletter >>> Last issue of the afia newsletter >>> Last available satistics for the afia newsletter Jean-Marie SAVALLE, ISAGRI founder and CEO, member of the French Ag Academy (ISAGRI Group: 2,250 employees, more than 115,000 customers, 11 subsidiaries in Europe, Canada and China) A New Snowtography Handbook Puts Water Data into the Hands of Small Farmers and Ranchers A new handbook, Snowtography: Snowpack & Soil Moisture Monitoring aims to put snowmelt and soil moisture data directly into the hands of ranchers, small farmers and other stakeholders in the western U.S. The handbook describes the importance of snow monitoring and provides easy-to-understand instruction on how to build and maintain a snow monitoring station using automated trail cameras. See tellus.ars.usda.gov FutureFarming.com > Affordable weeding robot for small farms on its way ROMI and Sony are nearing the end of the prototype phase for their affordable autonomous robot for mechanical precision weeding. They are considering to sell the weeding robot for small organic farms as an IKEA-style kit in 2025. The price of the kit will be between € 5,000 and € 10,000. > Crop sensing: Detecting crop nitrogen with hyperspectral sensors on planes Researchers put hyperspectral sensors on planes to quickly and accurately detect nitrogen status and photosynthetic capacity in corn. > Gene editing: World’s first CRISPR-edited sugarcane developed in Brazil Scientists from Embrapa Agroenergia in Brazil have developed the first sugarcane varieties edited using CRISPR gene editing technology. > Business update: AgroScout acquires TerrAvion assets Current AgroScout and TerrAvion clients will have access to a combination of aerial and satellite imagery products and precision agriculture services. > Autosteer: Your autosteer retrofit kit in our buying guide? Is your autosteer retrofit kit missing from Future Farming's buying guide? Please let us know. > Grain: Grain agtech challenge launched in Australia Innovative deep tech solutions are to help to drive sustainability and improve profitability in the grain growing industry. > Nitrogen: Nitrogen diminishes soil organic carbon in corn production Farmers should avoid excessive nitrogen inputs to maintain soil organic matter, according to new research by University of Illinois. > The worldwide search for harvesting robots Harvesting is a big challenge in agriculture. Labour shortages have already affected exports. But harvesting robots are still thin on the ground. > Site-specific weather forecast and work planning tools These are the benefits to using site-specific weather stations, weather forecast and work planning tools. > Field robots: Robot for real-time monitoring of crops French start-up Meropy aims to offer farmers real-time monitoring in the field with its autonomous robot SentiV. > Pest monitoring: FarmSense, ‘Pesticide-free future with insect monitoring’ How smart pest management and insect monitoring could greatly reduce the use of expensive and damaging pesticides. Read more > Video: Unridden bed plough requires precision tuning The precision plough is developed for unridden bed or fixed tramline cultivation systems. Read more > Slurry analysis: Samson to test slurry analysis technology this year Samson Agro is working on a new technology for online and real-time slurry analysis called SlurryLab. > Crop sensing: Detecting crop nitrogen with hyperspectral sensors on planes University of Illinois researchers put hyperspectral sensors on planes to quickly and accurately detect nitrogen status in corn. Read more See futurefarming.com Furtmeyr-Bibel (Deutsche Bibel, Altes Testament, Bd. 1: Genesis - Rut) um 1468 - 1470 'Fitbits' on cows? How technology and health monitoring helps dairy farmers, by By Michelle Miller, Farm Babe While genetic and nutritional improvements can be thanked for improving dairy farming, advancements in technology have also played a huge part. As the global population grows and agricultural resources become more sparse, dairy cattle operations have become larger, multifaceted, and far more efficient. While genetic and nutritional improvements can be thanked for much of that increased efficiency, advancements in technology have also played a huge part. Not only that, but technology has tremendously improved cow welfare over the years. An example of such technology is Fitbit-like devices that dairy cattle wear all day long. More accurately, these devices are known as automated health monitoring systems (sometimes referred to as rumination collars). Typically they look like neck collars equipped with a small electronic monitoring tag that non-invasively keeps track of the cow’s rumination time and physical movement. These systems allow farm managers to oversee a large herd without expending a great deal of time and resources to do so. .../... See agdaily.com Vaccine or not vaccine (source New-York Time newsletter) The Voices Who Are Driving Change Convened at 2022 VISION Conference to Transform Agribusiness and Address Emerging Technology and Trends Nearly 200 participants gathered for the conference in Phoenix, AZ, to dive deep into important topics related to regenerative ag, automation, connectivity, and transparency. See precisionag.com EarthDaily Analytics Rebrands Geosys: 4 Things to Know About EarthDaily Agro The company held a virtual press conference during the VISION Conference to officially announce the name change and what it means for the industry. See precisionag.com Book of Hours, France, perhaps in Paris or northeastern France, ca. 1465 How did we the future yesterday?? See the incredible collection developed by Alain Fraval What Does Deere’s Fully Autonomous Tractor Mean for Sustainability in Agriculture? Here are three things you should know about Deere’s autonomous 8R tractor and what they mean for sustainability. See precisionag.com Digital Twins in Agriculture: Breakthrough or Hype? Prospera Technologies CTO Raviv Itzhaky makes sense of digital twins and their potential in agriculture. See precisionag.com Book of Hours, France, Rouen, ca. 1490 2022 PrecisionAg Awards Of Excellence: Nominations Are Now Open Nominate an outstanding individual for one of four PrecisionAg Awards of Excellence. See precisionag.com From Geosys to EarthDaily Agro! Our new name represents the storied evolution and the exciting future of our business to deliver superspectral imagery data and analysis in Agriculture. EarthDaily Agro provides space age data and analytics for the organizations and people who feed the planet. Importantly, as part of EarthDaily Agros DNA, the Geosys brand will live on as the name of EarthDaily Agro’s new next generation software platform - a platform that is easier to use, offers more flexibility, faster speed, and greater scale - to provide more customers with more data in more markets in agriculture. See earthdailyagro.com Le Roman de la Rose ca.1365 France Indian farmer-to-business platform WayCool bags $117m to build agrifoodtech conglomerate, AFN, by Jack Ellis - WayCool Foods, a startup which helps farmers sell their produce to enterprise customers online, has raised $117 million in Series D funding. - New and existing investors including LightRock, LightBox, Lightsmith, Redwood Equity Partners, Gawa Capital, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, and Dutch development bank FMO participated in the round, which involved both equity and debt financing. - The Chennai-based startup said it will use the funds to boost its “deeptech” and automation capabilities. See agfundernews.com Vibrant tech sector attracts record cash, The Times, by Greig Cameron (feat. Intelligent Growth Solutions) Innovations in areas from vertical farming and online grocery shopping to crypto currency and health monitoring have put Scotland’s fast growing technology companies on course for record levels of investment. It is thought the total for last year will top £630 million once the final data has been calculated despite the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. See thetimes.co.uk Aigen gets $4m from NEA, AgFunder to boost farm sustainability with solar robots, AFN, by Jennifer Marston (feat. Aigen) .../... Its small robots use a mix of sensors, cameras, and software to monitor and manage plants in the field and help farmers make decisions around tasks like weeding and propagation. Precisely monitoring each individual plant also means farmers don’t have to blindly spray an entire field with pesticides in order to protect growth. An invasive weed, for example, can simply be identified by one of Aigen’s robot and removed. “With the farmers, when we when we have conversations with them as to how can we help improve soil health, one of the biggest responses is, ‘Help us with the weed problem,'” co-founder Kenny Lee tells AFN. “So that is going to be one of the first problems that we’ll be helping to solve.” At the same time, Aigen is focused on helping farmers improve soil health. Some studies, including the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ‘Report on Climate Change and Land,’ estimate that 60% to 75% of soil carbon has been lost due to agricultural land use. Aigen claims that its system can help counter such losses by automating on-farm processes that don’t require consumables such as fuel, and by effectively replacing chemical use that deteriorates soil and its ability to sequester carbon. “Our mission is to regenerate soil at a planetary scale using using robotics,” Lee says. …./... See agfundernews.com Deutsche Gartenbaubibliothek, Bücherei des Deutschen Gartenbaues Meet the founder: Tevel’s Yaniv Maor talks field trials with flying robots, AFN, by Jack Ellis (feat. Tevel) …/… Founded in 2016 by computer engineer Yaniv Maor, the Israeli ag robotics startup set out to solve one of the most pressing problems in modern fruit farming: the diminishing availability of manual labor. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the relative number of orchard workers may have halved over the past two decades; however, fruit production has doubled over the same period, in line with rising demand. Tevel’s answer was to design a system of interconnected drones — called Flying Autonomous Robots, or FAR for short — tethered to a ground unit, which can harvest tree-grown fruits and carry out other tasks, such as pruning, trimming, and thinning, which would typically require human labor. …/… See agfundernews.com Sales of electric vehicles take off (Bloomberg Newsletter) Renewable energy costs are falling (but are still intermittent!) (Bloomberg Newsletter) Over 1.2 million people died from drug-resistant infections in 2019 – study, Reuters, by Mrinalika Roy More than 1.2 million people died in 2019 from infections caused by bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics, higher than HIV/AIDS or malaria, according to a new report published on Thursday. Global health officials have repeatedly warned about the rise of drug-resistant bacteria and other microbes due to the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which encourages microorganisms to evolve into "superbugs". See reuters.com Folio
28r (page 59). Tacuinum sanitatis, Codex Vindobonensis,
series nova 2644. Northern Italy, probably Verona,
1380-1399
We've all seen the pictures of smoggy skies over New Delhi, but there's another side to the story While outdoor air pollution is worsening in some parts of the developing world, household air pollution deaths are in steep decline thanks to economic growth. With more money in their pockets, the world's poor can replace their toxic wood and dung stoves with gas and electric ones. That's why overall, global air pollution deaths have fallen by 40% since 1990. Why do women live longer than men? Everywhere in the world women live longer than men. But this was not always the case — the available data shows that women didn't live longer than men in the 19th century. In this article from August 2018 we explore the question of why women live so much longer than men today, and why this has changed over time. Giant machines NEXAT is the synergy of 50 years of development expertise and cutting-edge technology from market-leading agricultural machinery manufacturers. The result is NEXAT revolution: the world’s first and only holistic crop production system that can answer the challenges of the future in technical, economic and ecological terms; a milestone for the development of CO2-neutral agriculture in Germany, Europe and worldwide. See nexat.de Soil health and carbon sequestration are vital paths to long-term farm profitability, by Jon Stika, January 19, 2022 As you may have noticed by the previous articles that I have written for AGDAILY, soil health has been a passion of mine for many years. The reason I have been writing and teaching about soil health for so long is because I believe it is the future of agriculture. Not just a future version of agriculture, but how agriculture will literally continue to exist from both an economic and environmental perspective. The reason I believe this is because a farming enterprise cannot continue to degrade its soil resource while striving to provide a return on investment to the farmer. As a farmer, if you are not currently engaged in purposefully regenerating your soil from the degradation that has occurred in the past, then by default you are continuing to degrade your soil. …/… See agdaily.comv Folio 20v (page 44). Tacuinum sanitatis, Codex Vindobonensis, series nova 2644. Northern Italy, probably Verona, 1380-1399
Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition • FSN Forum / Data collection and analysis tools for food security and nutrition - Online consultation on the V0 Draft of the Report proposed by the HLPE Steering Committee and the Project Team See fao.org A lab-stage mRNA vaccine targeting ticks may offer protection against Lyme and other tick-borne diseases, by ANDALEEB SAJID See allianceforscience.cornell.edu Is the GMO Debate Over? January 10, 2022, by Amanda Zaluckyj I came across this article listing the reasons why the anti-GMO movement is dead. I certainly agree those are good reasons why the debate should be over. But is it? I’m going to say, “not so fast.” I agree that we’ve seen a huge decrease in the prevalence of the anti-GMO message. Those groups have found other things to scare people about. Increasingly, young people support biotechnology. And the issue seems trivial as we confront other looming problems, like climate change. But here’s the thing. While the anti-GMO disinformation and propaganda has died down, the overall message is still part of the public consciousness. Unfortunately, people don’t just forget when the faucet closes. It lingers, even if just under the surface. …/… See thefarmersdaughterusa.com Countries in permanent civil war, or at war, are struggling to reduce the birth rate Here: Niger, Burkina Faso, Palestine, Iraq Countries that until very recently had high birth rates are "making" fewer children Here: Morocco, Iran, Tunisia, Turkey Who predicted into account the massive drop in the birth rate around the world? The birth rate has dropped all over the world. It will also fall in Africa... The pb is even that having more children is difficult. Even the Chinese can't do it. Attracting Bloodsucking Flies to a Sticky End Bloodsucking insects are a serious problem in agriculture as they inflict painful bites that induce weight loss, decreased milk production, and other harmful stress responses in livestock animals. Stable flies are notoriously some of the costliest and damaging of the bunch, causing approximately $2 billion in damages annually. .../... See tellus.ars.usda.gov Apple gives in on right-to-repair by Lucas Mearian In a first, the company said it will open up an online site next year where Apple hardware owners can order genuine Apple parts to repair iPhones and other devices. See computerworld.com We look at why Africa is so far behind in vaccination rates, by David Leonhardt (December 2021) …/… The sources of the skepticism are different in the U.S. and in Africa. In much of Africa, they are related to decades of exploitation and poverty. In the U.S., the biggest cause is political polarization: More than 35 percent of Republican voters are unvaccinated, compared with fewer than 10 percent of Democrats. But both forms of skepticism stem from distrust — of experts, institutions and government leaders. And that distrust has become a major reason that the world is struggling to defeat Covid. The more people remain unvaccinated, the more the Covid virus spreads and the more people die. Less vaccination also increases the chances that dangerous variants will emerge. …/… Viewpoint: Obsolete regulations block using CRISPR to develop safer potatoes, healthier tomatoes and climate resistant crops, by Catherine Regnault-Roger CRISPR technology is a major technological breakthrough compared to the genome modification technologies that preceded it; developed then published by Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna in the international journal Science in 2012. They received for this discovery, in a record time (only eight years) the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020! This shows the importance of this innovation. .../... See geneticliteracyproject.org International Grains Council The International Grains Council (IGC) is an intergovernmental organisation that seeks to: - Further international cooperation in grains trade; - Promote expansion, openness and fairness in the grains sector; - Contribute to grain market stability and to enhance world food security. See igc.int A Winnowing-Fan, used to separate grain from chaff
The global high-stakes food experiment no one is talking about, by Paul M. Temple, January 13, 2022 The world is about to embark on a massive experiment in food production—and there’s a very real risk that we won’t like the result. The good news is that food never has been more abundant and, even though prices fluctuate, it’s never been more affordable. That’s because we’re growing more food than ever before. Since 2000, we’ve boosted the harvests of the planet’s four primary crops—sugar cane, corn, wheat, and rice—by about 50 percent. Meat production has risen by nearly as much and the production of vegetable oils has more than doubled, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. …/… See globalfarmernetwork.org The demise of Scientific American: Guest post by Ashutosh Jogalekar Wokism in American Scientific Journal See Scott Aaronson blog King dollar(1) (Source IFRI) King dollar(2) (Source IFRI) Attracting Bloodsucking Flies to a Sticky End Bloodsucking insects, such as stable flies, are a serious problem in agriculture as they inflict painful bites that induce weight loss, decreased milk production, and other harmful stress responses in livestock animals. Unfortunately, there are few control methods except for traditional insecticides. To address the need for better ways to combat these bloodsucking critters, a team at the Agroecosystem Management Research Unit developed several novel attractants capable of luring in flies. See tellus.ars.usda.gov GMO crops reduce greenhouse gas emissions, Canadian study finds, by Joseph Maina, November 22, 2021 See allianceforscience.cornell.edu Cesare Beccaria, the 18th century Italian criminologist known as the father of modern criminal justice Thanks to his work, many nations were inspired to ensure due process and end torture and capital punishment. See humanprogress.org Endemia, al fin, para Víctor Briones Dieste, 05 Ene 2022 Superar la pandemia no será volver a un estado prepandémico, sino generar nuevos comportamientos adaptados a necesidades evolutivas, como el virus. Ver elpais.com Una mujer supera una de las peores infecciones conocidas gracias a un tratamiento con virus Científicos y médicos describen cómo salvaron a una ciudadana belga herida en un atentado de una bacteria resistente a todos los antibióticos. Ver elpais.com Entrevista a Bruno Pouzet, director general de Limagrain Ibérica La revista Tierras Agricultura tuvo la oportunidad de entrevistar el pasado mes de noviembre, en el Campus Viriato de Zamora, al CEO de Limagrain en la península ibérica. Bruno Pouzet es el responsable para España y Portugal de la cuarta empresa de semillas más importante del mundo. La decisión estratégica de especializarse en la obtención de variedades y en la producción de semilla, e invertir de forma decidida en I+D, es la clave del éxito de esta cooperativa francesa cuyos propietarios -un total de 1.500 agricultores- reinvierten cada año en investigación el 17% de su cifra de ventas. Ver interempresas.net Winnowing feathers from the margin of Den Haag, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, ms MMW 10 F 50, f.138v, Netherlandish mid-15thC. 10 Great Jokes About Americans, by Chrissy Stockton, July 4th 2014 1. Why do Germans love Americans? - Because Americans are the most hated people in the world now. 2. What do sex in a canoe and American beer have in common? - They’re both fucking close to water. 3. If someone who speaks two languages is bilingual, and someone who speaks many languages is multilingual, then what do you call someone who speaks one language? - An American. 4. I had to go see my doctor today because I’m having an unusual problem. I say to him, “I’ve got a problem, every time I finish masturbating, I sing the American national anthem”. - The doctor said, “Don’t worry, a lot of wankers sing that”. 5. How many Americans does it take to fill the Grand Canyon? - 4. 6. What’s the difference between the US and yogurt? - If you leave yogurt alone for 300 years, it develops a culture. 7. Knock knock? Who’s there? 9/11. 9/11 who? You said you would never forget… 🙁 8. What do you call a worker in America that will work hard for reasonable pay and never whine? - An immigrant. 9. what happened when the American broke his arm? - He went broke. 10. My friend calls me up and asks “Hey are you free tonight?” - And I say of course, I’m American.
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