Press Release: Airbus join recently announced Agri-food Data Marketplace

Airbus are marketing AI-powered, satellite-derived crop analytics through Agrimetrics’s recently launched Agri-food Data Marketplace. This could reduce crop lodging risk, improve irrigation and benchmarking.

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Aerospace giant Airbus are marketing Airbus Crop Analytics, an AI-powered crop analytics service, on the Agri-food Data Marketplace recently launched by Agrimetrics, the UK Agri-Tech Centre for Innovation in Data Science.

“Our goal is to provide easy access to cutting-edge data for every field in the UK,” says Dr David Flanders, CEO of Agrimetrics. “Airbus Crop Analytics will enable users to answer dozens of questions; whether they’re looking at the national picture or individual fields, it will make yield predictions and benchmarking more accurate, improve crop health, irrigation and nitrogen applications.”

Dr David Flanders

CEO, Agrimetrics

Airbus Crop Analytics uses AI to translate satellite imagery into 15 attributes, including leaf area index and leaf water content. Through Agrimetrics’s Data Marketplace, these attributes are available for every field in the UK. Furthermore, they have been linked to other important metrics, including soil chemistry, historic and forecasted weather, and ecological indicators.

“Satellite data has huge promise for the food and farming sector,” continues Flanders. “Our collaboration with Airbus is making that data easier and faster to access in a format that users want. In some cases, we’ve halved the required processing time.”

Crop Lodging over?

Crop Lodging is a major problem for growers. In the worst cases, yields can be decreased by 75% and additional drying costs can reach £7.50/tonne.* The cost for the UK farming sector can reach £170m per year.*

“Lodging can be reduced by applying growth regulators, but this is expensive and difficult to manage,” explains Dr Matthew Smith, Agrimetrics’ Chief Product Officer and a former Director at Microsoft. “Remote observations from Airbus Crop Analytics could be fed into AHDB’s Lodging risk calculation model, which is freely available.

“Advisors and growers could then manage Lodging on a hectare-by-hectare basis. Growth regulators could be applied only when and where needed – and this could be worked out without even visiting a field. Waste is reduced, whilst yields and profits are improved.”

Dr Matthew Smith

CPO, Agrimetrics

In this example, just two of Airbus’s fifteen available attributes are required. Other combinations of attributes could be used to calculate irrigation and nitrogen requirements, micro- and macro-level yield predictions, and field-to-field benchmarking.

New Age Agronomy

Airbus Crop Analytics promises huge benefits for service providers and large agribusinesses, for whom remote field scouting promises substantial time and cost savings.

Agrimetrics makes Airbus Crop Analytics available for all 2.8million UK fields, and connects them to more than a billion other agricultural data points

“One UK-based organisation we’re speaking with is responsible for tens-of-thousands of hectares spread around the World,” continues Matthew. “The costs of monitoring these crops are prohibitive, so effective management actions can’t always be taken, and yields suffer. On occasion, managers won’t have discovered a crop has failed until harvest.

“Airbus Crop Analytics will enable this organisation to monitor every hectare from one UK office. They can be automatically alerted to issues in real-time and address these issues before they become problems. Even if they prevented just one field’s‘ crop from failing, this would be a good return-on-investment.”

Airbus Crop Analytics consists of 15 attributes, including: Leaf Water Content, Green Cover, Leaf Chlorophyll Content, Brown Cover, Leaf Area Index (LAI), NDVI, and Soil Water Saturation. Each attribute has been linked to AI-derived Field Boundaries and more than 1 billion relevant data points, including historic and forecasted weather, soil composition, and a range of ecological indicators.

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About Agrimetrics

Agrimetrics is the food and farming sector’s Data Marketplace. We enable organisations to safely share and monetise their data, whilst making it easier for data-consumers to access the information they need. Our goal is to help create a more productive and sustainable food system by enabling next-generation solutions as quickly and affordably as possible.

We are one of four centres for agricultural innovation founded with an initial investment from Innovate UK. Our founding partners are NIAB, SRUC, Rothamsted Research and The University of Reading. We have strategic partnerships with Airbus and Microsoft and are a participant in Microsoft’s prestigious AI for Earth programme.

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About the four centres
The Agri-Tech Centres are a unique collaboration between Government, academia and industry created to drive greater efficiency, resilience and wealth across the agrifood sector. A £90m investment from the UK’s strategic innovation agency (Innovate UK) is enabling the Centres to harness leading UK research and expertise as well as build new infrastructures and innovation. They include CHAP (Crop Health and Protection), CIEL (Centre for Innovation Excellence in Livestock), Agri-EPI (Engineering and Precision Technologies), and Agrimetrics.

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