Alex Beek
Consumers demand that their food to be safe and produced in a sustainable way with respect to the environment. This causes a growing need for documentation that ensures transparency and quality. These administrative tasks take up to 20 per cent of farmers’ workloads.
AgriBase is a hands-free registration tool that covers all demands from government, the food and retail industries, and consumers by using satellite timing and navigation to authenticate the registration of all crop management activities, from field preparations to harvest.
Innovation
An AgriBase registration unit is installed on the farmer’s machinery. This unit automatically registers all of the farmer’s activities with the aid of GNSS and on-board sensors. The registered data (when, where, who, what) are transferred via GPRS/WiFi to the AgriBase back office. With the aid of knowledge-based rules, these sensor events are translated into meaningful registrations and saved to a database.
Target market
The primary target market consists of farmers of general field crops and agricultural contractors in the EU27. Around 350,000 farmers and contractors are big enough and willing to take up satellite navigation. They are confronted with heavy competition, rapid economic and technical changes, critical consumers, and increasing demand for documentation and corporate social responsibility. To turn these challenges into opportunities, information management and cooperation are vital. The GNSS-based AgriBase solution provides a platform that enables farmers to produce excellent data with less effort and at a lower cost while sharing knowledge profitably with other elements in the food chain.
Customer benefit
Farmers enjoy immediate benefits:
- Social: AgriBase farmers have complete, correct, and timely documentation of their produce, restoring consumer confidence in food.
- Ecological: AgriBase increases the accuracy and reliability of production data, leading to more sustainable farm operations.
- Economical: Automating registration work saves up to 20 per cent of working time. Better data will lead to better farm economics.
- Institutional: AgriBase facilitates new ways of collaboration in the food production chain. The solution makes it easy for farmers to comply with valuable certification and quality improvement schemes.
Contact:
Mr. Alex Beek
Food Process Innovations
Van Ledenberchstraat 10
2334 AT Leiden
The Netherlands
phone: +31 (0) 65 42 68 026
e-mail: alexbeek@planet.nl
