Cameras and RFID help increase crop yields.
Security technologies used to solve agricultural problems enable producers, distributors and system integrators to think about new trade prospects.
To survive in times of crisis and market instability, security service providers are finding innovative applications for their technologies.
In agriculture, the market for video surveillance systems and contactless radio frequency identification (RFID) has been growing for a decade.
Keeping in mind that we need to go beyond traditional tasks, let's look at how security technologies are being applied to address issues of proper farming, crop protection, and the safety of crop and raw material processing.
A view from above.
For quality agronomy, farms are turning to aerial photography performed by unmanned air vehicles (UAVs).
«Aerial imaging can help identify areas of soil salinity, plant diseases, insects, pests and dead crops,» says Greg Lewis, founder of On Demand Imagery Solutions.
For vegetation monitoring, aircraft are typically launched in good, clear weather to obtain high-quality images.»
Multispectral imaging and NDVI.
Multispectral cameras that use near-infrared light in contrast to the red light from standard digital cameras give growers a vegetation index known as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).
“By comparing near-infrared to red wavelengths, this index shows differences in vegetation and allows growers to pinpoint abnormal areas and report problem areas,” says Lewis.
“With NDVI, growers can pinpoint productive areas of soil, measure soil fatigue levels and determine overall field health,” says Steve Heinold, vice president of Tetracam.
Abnormal NDVI results can indicate hail, moles, pest infestations, and nitrogen deficiencies, among other potential problems.
Farmers can insure crops against hail damage, and insurance companies can pay out based on multispectral aerial imagery that confirms the extent and location of crop damage.
Multispectral imaging gives farmers more accurate data on nitrogen levels directly in the leaves, Heinold says.
It's important for farmers not to overdo it with fertilizers, as too much of it pollutes the water and soil.»
Putting it all together.
The digital cameras and the agricultural aircraft themselves can be controlled via radio and GPS, making the solution easy to use and reducing human labor.
According to aviation regulations, unmanned aerial vehicles must fly at a constant altitude, which prevents the camera from capturing the entire field in one image.
In order to combine multiple images of individual sections into a complete image of the field, existing software developments are aimed at creating a technology for combining images based on GPS data.
Such precise technology requires powerful and modern software capabilities for gluing images.
«Today, the program from On Demand Imagery Solutions allows us to solve the problem of incorrect orientation of images and automate the process of joining using image coordinates,» Lewis said.
In the picture: NDVI indicator of a potato field with an irrigation system.
Red zones indicate problems caused by the spread of aphids, which lead to the death of plants.
Data from multispectral cameras on aircraft helps farmers manage their farms.
«Multispectral camera images can also be pre-processed, loaded into a mosaic or overlay program, and then adjusted and georeferenced,» Heinold says.
Using reference points from the photo data, such as lakes, trees and vegetation, algorithms in the image stitching program can put the photos together in the right order, allowing agronomists to solve problems in the right way.»
A growing niche.
As aircraft become cheaper and more common, the market for precision farming using multispectral cameras will definitely grow, Heinold said.
People are increasingly interested in GPS-powered self-piloting aircraft. It's a small market for now, but it's growing.
«Manufacturers like MicroPilot, which specializes in miniature autonomous aircraft, offer low-cost solutions that cost around $7,000 per aircraft,» says Pierre Pepin, vice president of marketing and sales at MicroPilot.
These aircraft are designed specifically for tracking grain crops and similar applications, such as tracking cattle in pastures and forests.»
Tracking salmon.
In order to preserve and protect aquaculture, RFID technology can be used to track salmon migration.
In the agricultural market for passive RFID tags, the share of fish tracking is insignificant compared to livestock.
However, it is an important method of measuring and counting fish numbers, which provides results in a short period of time.
Today, 80 percent of the salmon tracking market is in the United States.
Moreover, this market segment is sponsored by the government.
The danger of hydraulic structures.
The Columbia River basin in the northwestern United States is home to more than 15 million migratory fish known as salmon.
Salmon reproduce in river water, migrate to the ocean to mature for 1-5 years, and then return to their native habitat.
«To track salmon migration and prevent them from getting caught in hydroelectric turbines, about 5 percent of the fish are tagged with passive integrated transmitters, each with a unique code and entered into a database,» says Zeke Mejia, chief technology officer at Digital Angel.
A large number of young fish, called smolts, are tagged at detection sites or in turbine bypass systems located on dams and are then released into the wild.»
«Hydroelectric turbines pose a serious threat to migrating fish, killing them constantly,» says Mejia.
The turbine can suck the fish down to a depth of 10 meters, grind them up and throw them back to the surface.
So an RFID salmon tracking system was developed specifically for the agribusiness industry to ensure safe passage through the dams.»
Safe passage.
«Each bypass system records the date and time of each radio-tagged fish that passes through it, comparing the data with fish survival rates from other rivers and lakes along the fish's route,» Mejia says.
With this data, biologists can draw conclusions about problems such as pollution levels in lakes, farms and factories that dump too much waste into the water, or timber that is floating downstream. They can also accurately determine the quality of reproduction and conditions of spawning grounds or new spawning grounds.»
A fine mesh is installed at the entrance to each turbine to filter out the fish and redirect them into a pipe equipped with an RFID reader.
Each bypass system has two 20-inch salmon passages, each with readers to mark migration routes.
There are no bottlenecks in the salmon passing through the system because the readers work so fast, at 30 milliseconds, to handle millions of tagged fish every day.
Because information about each tagged fish is collected electronically, any specific fish can be selected based on its signal at dams, rivers, hatcheries or acclimation ponds, Mejia says.
Fish are caught for physical examination, and this process is very important to reconstruct the life history of the fish.»
Tracking shrimp.
In addition to tracking animals and fish, RFID technology has also been successfully applied to solving the issues of processing products and raw materials.
Since shrimp is an expensive product and its processing is carried out by people, it is the most difficult product to track.
Large enterprises process 50 to 100 tons of shrimp daily.
«Owners of such large-scale enterprises are very interested in information about how much raw material has been processed and how much product has been processed, and the entire path of the product in the production process is also interesting.
So everything needs to be tracked,» says Dr. Naiyavud Wongkomet, a representative of IE Technology Processing.
The shrimp processing process consists of 10 separate steps and it is impossible to track the shrimp without using RFID.
Previously, when paper records were kept, a worker would manually write down the code for each bin of shrimp, using thousands of pieces of paper every day.
Now, an RFID tag is attached to the bin or container.
These containers contain all the information about the shrimp, from where they came from to when they were gutted, cleaned, weighed, frozen and packed.
RFID automates the data collection of all these processes, feeding the information into a tracking program,» says Wongkomet.
In the picture:
NDVI indicator of a potato field with an irrigation system.
Red zones indicate problems caused by the spread of aphids, which lead to the death of plants.
Data obtained from multispectral cameras from aircraft helps farmers manage their farms.
Other advantages of RFID.
«In factories with up to 5,000 employees, production control is as important as keeping track of the shrimp,» says Wongkomet.
With RFID tags, managers can track the results of work and evaluate the productivity of workers.
For example, if instead of the 30 minutes it usually takes to clean a basket of shrimp, an employee spends three hours, the RFID system can report when the basket has moved on to the next stage of processing.
Accordingly, the manager can deal with the situation or the employee.
Food and its processing are under strict control today.
The United States, Japan and European countries have introduced regulations and standards for tracking the place of production and food safety.
RFID technology helps companies comply with these regulations.
“Leaving aside the super benefits of the shrimp tracking system, the initial investment in this technology usually pays off within a year or two,” says Wongkomet.
We are constantly seeing an increase in the number of new users. Until recently, the adoption of this technology has been slow, but customers are becoming more interested, which is steadily leading to its adoption.»
Future Applications
Technologies such as video surveillance and RFID are not limited to the security market and can certainly be used in a wide range of solutions.
In times of turmoil and economic instability, innovation and ingenuity will help expand the boundaries of business and see new partners through the curtain of the financial storm.