Efita Newsletter 947, dated August 17, 2020

Efita Newsletter 947, dated August 17, 2020
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EFITA

Châtenay-Malabry (FR - 92290), August 17, 2020

EFITA newsletter / 947 - European Federation for Information Technology in Agriculture, Food and the Environment


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New study on Agrisemantics for food security

>> Introduction
Agrisemantics allows the meaning of specific concepts in agricultural data to be clearly defined and understood by organisations who consume or produce data in the agricultural supply chain. This can be achieved with publicly available resources such as taxonomies, ontologies and thesauri which when created for agriculture are collectively referred to as Agrisemantics. These resources have been available for at least the last twenty years. The adoption of these resources by the agricultural sector has been limited and at best uneven in quality or performance. This study is designed to understand why the adoption of Agrisemantics is stymied.

>> Project Aims
The main aim of this project is to gain an understanding of the commonalities of adoption of Agrisemantics of all communities. From these common themes we wish to identify the drivers and roadblocks to the adoption of Agrisemantics in private industry as well as possible blindspots in the current development of publicly available resources. A secondary aim of this study is to publicise Agrisemantics to decision makers. The current COVID crisis has exposed the fragility of Agricultural Supply Chains. Agrisemantics facilities interoperability and has the potential to distribute the risk by allowing the ad-hoc integration of small suppliers into larger supply chain systems. This distribution of risk removes single points of failure in Supply Chains which are created by small numbers of large suppliers. However, many decision makers are unaware of this. It is hoped that this study will raise awareness how Agrisemantics can benefit Agricultural companies.

>> Methodology
The research methodology uses in person interviews and a questionnaire to elicit opinions about:
- The adoption of AgriSemantics in private industry and the public sector
- The flaws in current Agrisemantics public resources.
- How does funding impede or enable Agrisemantics projects
- Is there any incentive for knowledge transfer from publicly funded projects to private industry.
- Is there any pressure from government agencies to force private industry to adopt standards.
- The measurable benefit of semantics resources and technologies to the targeted goals of researchers and business decision makers.
- The interview process is a free form interview where the interviewee expresses their opinion about the core themes as well issues that they think is important.

The study is interested with interviewing people with the following profiles:
- Individuals who approve funding for Agrisemantics projects
- Individuals who have served on committees that set funding criteria for Agriculture
- Innovation projects
- Technical people who work with data integration on day to day basis
- Project Managers
- CEOs of AgriBusiness Companies
- NGOs who produce publicly available semantic resources
- Academics
- Technical professionals serving on committees tasked with the development of standards supporting interoperability.
- Agribusiness entrepreneurs
- Supply chain professionals
- Study Outputs

The study aims to produce a high quality policy paper which seeks to influence all levels of the Agrisemantics, and Agricultural communities, and put Agrisemantics front and centre in the current debate about food security and stability of the food supply chain.
See godan.info


Good old days (?????): Gleaning by Arthur Hughes



 

How did we see the future yesterday??

See the incredible collection developed by Alain Fraval


Archives of our newsletters in French and English
Voir Afia
Voir Efita

 

IoT and data science will boost foodtech in the post-pandemic era

Even as e-grocery usage has skyrocketed in our coronavirus-catalyzed world, brick-and-mortar grocery stores have soldiered on. While strict in-store safety guidelines may gradually ease up, the shopping experience will still be low-touch and socially distanced for the foreseeable future.

This begs the question: With even greater challenges than pre-pandemic, how can grocers ensure their stores continue to operate profitably?
See techcrunch.com


Benefits and challenges of digital ag applications

Danish farmer Knud Bay-Smidt started his own farm in 1987 cultivating grains, oilseed and grass seed on his 300 hectares of land. At the moment, he is using several digital applications. What are the benefits, but also challenges that he is facing?
See europa.eu


Good old days (?????): Women in the field by Anton Mauve

 

 

The people behind the product: agriculture community survey

The agriculture industry, like most others at this moment, is assessing where there are untapped skills from currently underrepresented groups of people. Organizations are increasingly looking at diversity and inclusion in the workforce, as well as outreach schemes for attracting more women and a younger generation to the industry.

New Ag International and Informa Connect Life Sciences are conducting one of the biggest studies of its kind across agriculture industry professionals from around the world, looking at the people behind the product. The final report will reveal unique insights into how insiders see the agriculture community and the biggest challenges and opportunities facing the industry in the coming years.

Click here to take part in the survey


Good old days (?????): Changing Pasture by Anton Mauve
   


Root AI raises $7.2m from AgFunder, others to deploy its ‘cross-crop robot’ workforce

Covid-19’s onset in the US coincided with one of the most important seasons on specialty crop farms across the country: harvest. As labor shortages and uncertainties surrounding the H2A visa program — and other pandemic-related factors — hit growers with a curveball, Root AI CEO Josh Lessing saw a prime opportunity to take his ag robotics startup to the next level.
.../...
See agfundernews.com


TemperPack raises $31m Series C to meet surge in demand for food e-commerce by Lauren Stine

Although Covid-19’s shelter-in-place orders have caused an untold list of headaches for people hunkered down in their homes, one particular grievance seems to have unified us all: cooking three meals a day is a relentless chore.

Despite the treadmill of recipes, prep work, and dishes to wash, the pandemic has offered consumers an opportunity to reconsider meal kits as a low-mental-effort solution to the persisting question of what’s for dinner. Meal-kit services saw sales double mid-April, with Blue Apron’s shares rallying 400% after dipping to as low as $2 in March.
See agfundernews.com



Amazon Fresh To Make Nationwide Grocery Retail Debut

While it took Amazon two and a half decades to capture 4% of the total US retail market, the e-commerce giant could quickly take out a meaningful chunk of $870bn grocery space. According to its second quarter earnings release, Amazon’s online grocery sales have tripled year-over-year as it inches closer towards Walmart, with Instacart maintaining dominant online grocery share.
See medium.com


This robot can pick tomatoes without bruising them and detect ripeness better than humans
See video
See cnbc.com


Good old days (?????): Returning Home Painting by Anton Mauve

   

MagGrow’s magnetic spray tech attracts $7.1m for Series A round

MagGrow, an Irish agtech startup harnessing magnetism to make crop spraying more accurate and less chemically intensive, has closed its Series A round at €6 million ($7.1 million).
See agfundernews.com


Technology to change the way horticulture is managed

Technology will make horticulture more efficient and sustainable, says founder and Managing Director Ros Harvey of Australian company, The Yield Technology Solutions. The company focuses on a problem all growers share: uncertainty created by weather.
See futurefarming.com

 
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Robots: RoamIO autonomous robot improves employee efficiency

Ontario ag-service company Haggerty Creek uses small, adaptable robot to complete time-consuming tasks.
See futurefarming.com


Soil testing: Measuring soil density with a smartphone camera

Scientists have developed a way to use a smartphone camera to quickly measure soil density.
See futurefarming.com


Good old days (?????): Faucheur ou moissonneur aiguisant sa faux par Georges Laugée

   

Farm management: FarmFacts offers online marketplace to German farmers

NEXT Marketplace allows farmers to purchase inputs from various suppliers within their farm management system.
See futurefarming.com


Guidance systems: Raven advances VSN guidance technology

Full canopy guidance and automatic row turnaround are added to Raven’s VNS Visual Guidance System.
See futurefarming.com


Good old days (?????): Wheat Stacks with Reaper by Vincent van Gogh
   


Rural America 2020 with Christopher Gibb (ex-republican) against Trump

A campaign dedicated to highlighting the negative impacts of President Trump’s policies in rural America.

Rural America Fund 2020 advocates for policies that benefit rural America, and ensures that in the 2020 election, the economic devastation brought to rural America is not ignored. In Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and other states, Rural America Fund 2020 is working to highlight the empty promises and misguided policies that have left manufacturers, educators, main street businesses, farmers and ranchers hurting.
See ruralamerica2020.org

 

Wolves in Germany / Der Wolf in Deutschland – Rückkehr eines Raubtiers
Sehen DBV

   

Gene manipulation using algae could grow more crops with less water, by Fiona Harvey

Enhanced photosynthesis holds promise of higher yields in a drought-afflicted future.

Tobacco plants have been modified with a protein found in algae to improve their photosynthesis and increase growth, while using less water, in a new advance that could point the way to higher-yielding crops in a drought-afflicted future.
See theguardian.com


RNAi-Based Pesticides Contribute To The Promise Of A New Green Revolution, by Michael Helmstetter

There are many challenges facing plant agriculture and animal health that might be addressed with RNAi technologies. The combination of vast genomic resources at our fingertips with the ability to manufacture RNA at low cost opens the door for the development of multiple product types that simply were not feasible even five years ago.

The future is indeed bright and growing for RNAi.
See forbes.com


Multiple virus resistance at a high frequency using a single transgene construct (2006)

RNA silencing is a natural antiviral defence in plants, which can be exploited in transgenic plants for preprogramming virus recognition and ensuring enhanced resistance. By arranging viral transgenes as inverted repeats it is thus possible to obtain strong repression of incoming viruses. Due to the high sequence specificity of RNA silencing, this technology has hitherto been limited to the targeting of single viruses. Here it is shown that efficient simultaneous targeting of four different tospoviruses can be achieved by using a single small transgene based on the production of minimal sized chimaeric cassettes. Due to simultaneous RNA silencing, as demonstrated by specific siRNA accumulation, the transgenic expression of these cassettes rendered up to 82 % of the transformed plant lines heritably resistant against all four viruses. Thus RNA silencing can be further improved for high frequency multiple virus resistance by combining small RNA fragments from a series of target viruses.
See pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov


Good old days (?????): Premiers pas par Vincent van Gogh

   

Trump Sends In the Economic Quacks By Paul Krugman

Now he’s prescribing hydroxychloroquine to fight recession.

The answer is that a payroll tax cut is the hydroxychloroquine of economic policy. It’s a quack remedy that somehow caught Trump’s eye, which he won’t give up because sycophants keep telling him he’s infallible.
.../...
At a moment of crisis America is cursed with a president who is incompetent, deeply ignorant, yet so personally insecure that he surrounds himself with people who tell him he’s a universal genius.
See nytimes.com


Corona Virus: Is American Conservative people becoming as crazy as ourselves?

>>> Sinclair Broadcast Group recently published an online interview with a conspiracy theorist who claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci created the coronavirus using monkey cells. Sinclair — which operates almost 200 television stations — has also run segments downplaying the severity of the virus.

>>> Fox News has repeatedly run segments promoting ideas that scientists consider false or that question the seriousness of the virus.

>>> Breitbart published a video this week in which a group of doctors claimed that masks were unnecessary and that the drug hydroxychloroquine cured the virus. It received 14 million views in six hours on Facebook, my colleague Kevin Roose reports. (President Trump tweeted a link to it.)
See NYT


Good old days (?????): Les vignes rouges d’Arles par Vincent van Gogh

   

Who's running the World?

Trump, Putin and Xi were arguing on who’s in charge of the world.

US, Russia or China?

Without any conclusion, they turned to Modi and asked him "Who’s in charge of the world?"

Modi replied “All I know is”:-

1. Google CEO is an Indian - Sundar Pichai

2. Microsoft CEO is an Indian - Satya Nadella

3. Citigroup CEO was an Indian - Vikram Pandit

4. SoftBank Vision Fund CEO is an Indian - Rajeev Misra

5. Adobe CEO is an Indian - Shantanu Narayen

6. NetApp CEO is an Indian - George Kurian

7. PepsiCo CEO was an Indian - Indra Nooyi

8. Nokia CEO is an Indian - Rajeev Suri

9. MasterCard CEO is an Indian - Ajay Banga

10. DBS CEO is an Indian - Piyush Gupta

11. Cognizant CEO was an Indian - Ramkumar Ramanoorthy

12. Novartis CEO is an Indian - Vasant Narasimhan

13. Conduent CEO was an Indian - ???

14. Diageo CEO is an Indian - Anand Kripalu

15. SanDisk CEO was an Indian - Sanjay Mehrotra

16. Motorola CEO was an Indian - ???

17. Harman CEO is an Indian - Dinesh Paliwal

18. Micron CEO is an Indian - same as 15

19. Palo Alto Networks CEO is an Indian - Nikes Arora

20. Reckitt Benckiser CEO is an Indian - Laxman Narasimhan

21. Now IBM CEO is also an Indian origin guy - Arvind Krishna

22. Britain’s Chancellor is an Indian - Rishi Sunak

23. Britain’s Home Secretary is an Indian - Priti Patel

24. Ireland’s Prime minister is an Indian - Leo Varadkar

So who's running the World?

Signalé par Luc BECKER
Mél : luc.becker(a)wanadoo.fr


Shameful debate


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Contact: Guy WAKSMAN
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