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INNOVATION IN PRACTICE
Machine learning and connectivity the next challenges for agtech The Australian Farmer recently spoke with Peter Schmidt, Microsoft Australia Agriculture Industry Specialist, about Microsoft’s role as a key driver of agtech, the current landscape for emerging technology and current agtech trends that will change the future of farming. By Carla Wong
TAF : What is Microsoft currently doing in terms of ag and agtech? PS: “Microsoft has been investing heavily in agriculture over the past four or five years, in a few areas. “The first, is how connectivity is provided. We have an initiative in the US called Micro- soft Airband, which uses unused TV frequen- cies and parts of the radio spectrum to provide internet connectivity to rural areas. That is something we are looking to get into Australia as well. “The other thing is a huge proliferation of sensors and IoT devices that are collecting data out in the field. The challenge will always be that we never have enough connectivity to process that data. Microsoft has invented ‘edge’ computing which allows you to process or run a machine-learning model on a low- power device and therefore provide that infor- mation without having to connect back to the cloud. “The other two areas are around machine learning and artificial intelligence. Microsoft has a huge team of data scientists working on
the algorithms for image analysis, video an- alysis and all sorts of data processing. Cloud computing gives you the ability to crunch very large volumes of data in a meaningful way, and process things like images and video in real time. That is helping us to glean new in- sights into how animals behave, how crops grow and so on. “Another big challenge we have is collecting data in a standard way, so we are working with industry bodies on what we are calling our ‘common data’ model. This is our way of bringing data into a standard structure and format. We then aggregate that data across multiple farms and multiple locations. Part of it is about protecting the privacy and security of that data, and developing technology that allows machine learning to run on encrypted data.” TAF: How do you think these specific ad- vances have changed, or will change, the way that farmers work? PS: “Where we’re seeing rapid innovation and evidence of success of these technolo- gies is in the horticultural sector, where higher
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