FarmBeats
Democratizing AI for farmers around the world
"As I'm starting to understand the value of this data and all of the possible ways I can use it … I'd say it's pretty much priceless.”
About FarmBeats
Several studies have demonstrated the need to significantly increase the world’s food production by 2050. However, there is limited amount of additional arable land, and water levels have also been receding. Although technology could help the farmer, its adoption is limited because the farms usually do not have power, or Internet connectivity, and the farmers are typically not technology savvy. We are working towards an end-to-end approach, from sensors to the cloud, to solve the problem. Our goal is to enable data-driven farming. We believe that data, coupled with the farmer’s knowledge and intuition about his or her farm, can help increase farm productivity, and also help reduce costs. However, getting data from the farm is extremely difficult since there is often no power in the field, or Internet in the farms. As part of the FarmBeats project, we are building several unique solutions to solve these problems using low-cost sensors, drones, and vision and machine learning algorithms.
Video
Journey
Ranveer Chandra is the principal researcher behind FarmBeats, a data-driven farming project designed to help increase farm productivity and reduce costs. FarmBeats highlights something essential for our future: AI doesn’t replace human knowledge; it augments it. In this case, data from low-cost sensors in soil and drones with machine learning algorithms work with farmers’ knowledge and intuition to help them gather and parse data about their farms – informing what, when, and where to plant in order to drive the highest-possible yields and reduce costs.
In just two and a half years, the team behind FarmBeats has iterated on their 2015 Hackathon prototype and created a working system melding technology with traditional agricultural practices.
- Featured at Microsoft Envision 2017 & Precision Ag Vision Conference 2017
- Featured on Voice of America and BBC Newsnight
- Showcased as one of 5 Windows IoT Innovative solutions
- Award for Internet of Things Innovation by the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance
Team
Ranveer Chandra, Akshay Uttama Nambi, Anirudh Badam, Ashish Kapoor, Chetan Bansal, Kenneth Tran, Manohar Swaminathan, Raghuram Lanka, Ranveer Chandra, Sudipta Sinha
Press
TV dinners : unused TV spectrum and drones could help make smart farms a reality
The Economist
Soil sensors, drones and data analytics are the new tools for farmers
The Globe and Mail
The people and projects that inspired me in 2017
Satya Nadella