There’s a growing lament across larger farms that have collected years of data and information from equipment, sensors and other sources: What can we do with all this data? A new purpose-built cloud for agriculture might provide the answer, according to Krishna Kumar, founder and CEO of Cropin, a company that started putting data to work in agriculture in 2010.

Back then, there was a growing need to build an ecosystem with data from these new information sources to create an ecosystem that was more data-driven. “The aim was to remove the uncertainties associated with farming and help to improve farm productivity across the world, and help the industry adopt technology and data,” Kumar says, in talking with Farm Progress.

There’s a growing pile of information from machines, sensors, satellites, crop scouts and other sources that are flooding into every farm. Kumar says Cropin has, over time, built many applications for digitization and farm management, which would help customer segments such as farming companies, seed producers, food processing companies, governments and development agencies to bring this information together and put it to work.

The challenge is that companies wanted to engage their grower-customers and provide seamless applications that put broad intelligence systems to work, but that means creating a data hub. “You have to build the ability to bring data from the farms, from the machines, from the satellite, from the weather system, and build machine learning models to predict things,” Kumar says.

On the farm, producers benefit from these data models from suppliers like local cooperatives, seed companies and others that are building programs to better manage irrigation or fungicide timing. But the Cropin Cloud wants to move beyond single-purpose approaches for data on the farm.

Bringing it all together

Most companies have some type of data-gathering system to collect machine information or updates from field sensors, but often those are limited to big organizations. Kumar says the Cropin Cloud is designed to be a multi-tenant, secure platform that enables agribusinesses, development agencies, governments and allied industries to advance digital transformation across their businesses and agricultural operations.

The integrated platform essentially operates in three layers:

1. Business applications. This layer digitizes information for smart farm management, grower engagement, supply chain management, etc. This is likely where farmers will see the fruits of the cloud with applications that offer better decision-making advancements.

2. Data hub. The core element is the Cropin Data Hub, which brings information from the field. This can include Internet of Things sensors; machine data from tractors, sprayers and combines; weather information; remote sensing data from satellites; and other sources brought into the center of the cloud. This is raw data but stored on a common system that is accessible in new ways. This clean and contextual data pipeline supports businesses with enhanced decision-making based on data analytics.

3. Cropin Intelligence. This includes artificial intelligence and machine learning models extracting key intelligence to enable decision-making on and off the field. Cropin's 22 contextual deep-learning and artificial intelligence models help agribusinesses with intelligence around crop detection, crop stage identification, yield estimation, irrigation scheduling, pest and disease prediction, nitrogen uptake, water stress detection, and harvest date estimation, among others.

The key is that this cloud is global, and the need for collected data for crop management far exceeds the corn and soybean fields of the Midwest.

“The global agriculture ecosystem is facing large disruptions triggered by climate change, geopolitical tensions, food supply challenges and an ever-increasing global population,” Kumar says. “Solving these challenges demands a technology platform that enables ecosystem players to transform their business operations.”

The purpose-built cloud can connect to these disparate data sources and enable that diverse pile of information to work for agriculture. You can learn more at cropin.com.