Digital solutions are part of the growing agtech sector. Over the last 20 years, agriculture has transitioned from an industry built on brawn – innovative solutions created through being bigger, faster, and stronger – to one combining brains and data.
Digital agriculture companies have taken off, and hundreds of millions of acres are now engaged in digital farming. In fact, these agtech solutions are one of several agriculture trends to watch in 2023 and beyond. The precision ag market is expected to grow at a compounded rate of nearly 13% until 2030, driven by the Internet of Things and farmers’ adoption of advanced analytics and big data.
According to McKinsey, digital agriculture encompasses platforms or applications that process input data in order to support the decision-making of growers or trusted advisors, like agronomists.
Digitalization in agriculture has the capability to increase yields, crop quality, and sustainability to address some of agriculture’s most challenging problems. As the world faces a growing population, food scarcity challenges, and a changing climate, innovative solutions are needed to help farmers produce more with less. Less natural resources, less arable land, fewer emissions, and less environmental degradation will be hallmarks of the future of agriculture.
But farming in the future, amidst this new landscape, will not be easy. Innovative solutions in agriculture will set farmers and the industry up for success.
ICL is invested in digital agriculture solutions for the future and is uniquely positioned to bring impactful results to the industry. Proven industry expertise, advanced fertilizer solutions, and the most capable technologies are a winning combination for farmers, consumers, and the environment.
One of ICL’s solutions taking the digital agriculture space by storm is Agmatix.
Agmatix: Fertile Ground through Common Ground
Agmatix is an agro-informatics company that provides data-driven solutions for the agriculture industry. The company’s software standardizes agronomic data and provides actionable insights for agriculture professionals and growers. Using advanced artificial intelligence technology, its unique approach improves crop yield and promotes sustainable agriculture.
Agmatix’s revolutionary platform enables improved decision-making in agriculture by integrating real-world agronomic data into one platform and allowing agriculture professionals to access the right information at the right time. Their scalable solutions empower users with the ability to extract new insights from their data to support field-level decisions that drive toward sustainability.
Agmatix’s Digital Solutions in Agriculture
Agmatix is a true leader in the digitalization of agriculture, having created a platform and solutions that process data to support the decision-making of agriculture professionals.
With data-driven tools that support agronomic field trials, create digital crop nutrient prescriptions, standardize and harmonize data, and model data for impact, Agmatix is calibrated to create cutting-edge agtech solutions that make a real difference across the agriculture industry.
Agronomic Trial Management
Agronomic field trials are a critical part of research and development in agriculture; they can also be challenging to plan, coordinate, execute, and analyze. Agmatix’s Agronomic Field Trial Management tool is an end-to-end digital solution designed to increase field trial efficiency, speed time to market, and enhance field trial data quality.
The software’s user-friendly interface and intuitive design make it easy to create, modify and run trials. The solution also enables seamless collaboration with internal and external stakeholders via status updates such as task and budget tracking and through protocol customization and reporting. Mobile capabilities enable accurate data collection with real-time visibility to identify errors, data gaps, and outliers.
Digital Crop Advisor
Digital Crop Advisor is a data-driven decision support tool that informs the agronomic decisions at the field level to impact crop yield, quality, and sustainability. With a few data points specific to the nature of the field and crop, Digital Crop Advisor recommends crop nutrient prescriptions based on the specific requirements for optimal crop nutrition. These optimized nutrition plans ensure each crop gets just the right amount of nutrients to reach its potential, without wasted inputs or potential leaching.
Digital Crop Advisor is specifically calibrated with sustainability in mind. With Digital Crop Advisor, agronomists and growers can understand the environmental implications of a crop nutrition protocol by quantifying and comparing sustainability KPIs such as carbon footprint and nitrogen leaching. It’s even possible to compare simulations for addressing crop nutrition needs while understanding tradeoffs between minimizing environmental impacts and maximizing crop productivity.
Axiom Technology
Axiom is the technology foundation for the Agmatix platform and empowers actionable insights through standardizing and harmonizing agronomic data. The GUARDS (Growing Universal Agronomic Data Standard) protocol uses the FAIR data principles and translates the researcher’s uniquely preserved agronomic data into a single, common language for usability by any agriculture professional or researcher, anywhere in the world.
Automatic data ingestion enables Axiom technology. Axiom is powered by an ontology engine that creates standardized definitions and harmonizes data points, converts and standardizes units, and proactively monitors for anomalies. An ontology engine creates standardized definitions and harmonization of data points, while anomaly detection occurs through a proactive monitoring engine. And a units converter engine translates different units into one and standardizes the data values so that databases and values can be customized. These three engines, as a part of Axiom, are fueled by automatic data ingestion.
Insights & Models
The Insights and Models tool leverages agronomic big data and data science for predictive modeling and data-driven advanced analytics capabilities. Agronomic big data and data science come together to enable agronomic predictive modeling for data-driven ag solutions and advanced analytics.
Not only is it possible to access data – including legacy data – in a single, unified place, but hidden agronomic insights are revealed through reports and recommendations. Pre-built statistical tools and widgets make it easy to generate powerful insights and models from agronomic data.
The insights tool allows the comparison of legacy trial data with current trial data to leverage insights that speed up product development decisions and increase the speed to market for new innovations.
Agmatix and Open Data
Agmatix is a strong proponent of open source and FAIR data. With Axiom technology, big data is translated into a single language to create actionable insights. Agmatix powers open source databases to enable public access to crop nutrition data that enhances localized datasets and supports decision-making for sustainability.
In collaboration with the International Fertilizer Association (IFA) and Wageningen University & Research (WUR), the Global Crop Nutrient Removal Database highlights relationships between crop nutrition inputs and outputs across different production and environmental conditions. Armed with this data, crop nutrition work is enhanced through improved assessments of crop nutrient removal rates and views of long-term nutrient demand trends. Nutrient application can be optimized to support sustainable agriculture.
The Nutrient Omission Trial Database supports site-specific optimized nutrient management and nutrition recommendations. It was created in partnership with the African Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI), IFA, and Innovative Solutions for Decision Agriculture (ISDA). Through understanding legacy nutrients that have accumulated in the soil over decades of production agriculture, nutrient recommendations can reflect site-specific soil fertility and farm conditions.
It’s even possible to assess trends in nutrient use efficiency across countries or regions.
Accessing supplemental data to enhance existing datasets is critical for the most informed decision-making and the strongest collaboration. Including data from multiple sources drives greater collaboration through broad insights and therefore a broad collaborator audience.
When enriched data can be analyzed by multiple experts, the world’s best minds can solve some of the most challenging problems.
More on the subject:
ICLeaf: A New Approach to Season-Long Data
Agriculture Top Trends to Watch For in 2023
The Positive Impact of AgTech in Advancing Food Security
ICL’s Digital Solutions and Sustainability
Digital solutions in agriculture will lead the way to a productive and sustainable future. The future of agriculture and our world depends on innovative solutions that unlock yield potential while protecting the environment. Agmatix is a global company driving digital solutions to empower agriculturalists to tackle agriculture’s toughest challenges.
Agmatix is just one example of ICL’s commitment to and investment in digital agriculture. Digital solutions in agriculture have an immense opportunity to make a meaningful difference for the agriculture industry and everyone on Earth that depends on it. ICL is proud to be leading the way in innovation and expertise in agriculture’s digitalization.
Food security and environmental stability start with high-grade, standardized agronomic data – provided by Agmatix and ICL.
