Elements goes agriculture!

Last year we developed several smartphone apps for Kverneland Group, a global manufacturer of agriculture equipment. Together with Kverneland we created the Spreading Charts apps for iPhone and Android for example, which are super handy and help farmers to setup their fertilizer spreading equipment.

Later in 2014 we stumbled upon an interesting accelerator program with an open call, named SmartAgriFood (SAF), funded by the European Union. This program supports initiatives on the crossroad of information technology and farming, so called “smart agrimatics”. The SAF program requires the usage of FIWARE technologies (a cloud-based infrastructure for internet applications) and the FIspace platform (an integrated collaboration system).

We teamed up with Kverneland again to work on a proposal for an application to submit to the SAF program. With their knowledge on agriculture and our experience with smartphone app development, we submitted a great project proposal that was eventually selected as one of the 50 best projects that made it to the final round.

So what are we working on? We will create an app that assists farmers in mixing chemicals in their sprayer equipment to optimize effectiveness in spraying their farm fields. The app will be able to scan a QR or barcode on a chemical container’s label using the phone camera, query a global chemicals database and present the optimal mixing ratio, safety instructions and other details to the farmer.

Earlier this week a small delegation of Elements visited the Net Futures 2015 conference in Brussels, which hosted the official SAF kickoff. During the kickoff all 50 projects were pitched and the participating companies had the change to meet and learn from each other. Also the developers of FIspace from Atos presented technical information and answered questions.

At Elements, the next few months we will be working on this app in close collaboration with our friends at Kverneland. We will keep you posted on our progress!

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Originally published at www.elements.nl on March 27, 2015.