Objectives of the service
All precision agriculture services start with accurate field boundaries and seeded acres.
Unfortunately, the problem is we’re making critical decisions based on inaccurate data which is affecting the entire agricultural value chain from pre-production to retailers. Large scale boundary data is managed through cadastral maps and national agencies: AR5 (NIBIO) in Norway which date back to 1990s, LPIS (part of CAP/IACS) in the 27 EU-regions includes ~36 million boundaries, CLU’s from the USDA in the US which are over 14 years old and include over 32 million boundaries.
As boundaries and especially seeded acres change every growing season, this existing map data becomes unreliable and inaccurate. We found in our early discovery that over 20% of all field boundary data in Norway are inaccurate. We solve this problem through developing deep neural network models for automatically detecting the highest accuracy field boundaries and seeded acres worldwide, using our model for deeply resolving Sentinel-2 from 10m to 1m resolution.
Users and their needs
DigiFarm’s end users are farmers and growers while our paying customers are B2B and B2G partners across the entire agricultural value chain, ranging from FMS-providers (Farm Management Software), crop insurance, financial institutes (banks), soft commodity based traders, food processors/retailers, land management, government agencies (agriculture). Our models will help our clients (and users) optimize predictional capabilities, logistics, crop-yield forecasts, determining
in-season crop-damage, reduce operational costs and increase revenue, creating stability to the sector. The primary application field is within agriculture and specifically precision agriculture, however, the data and models we deliver have significant use-case and value-add for the entire agricultural supply-chain from pre-production all the way through retailers. The targeted primary market of users are the EU-regions while our secondary market includes North America, Latin
America and Australia.
Service/ system concept
We intend to work with B2B and B2G partners in the agricultural space where we will deliver four key models and services including:
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Field Delineation Model: automatic detection of field boundaries and seeded acres
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Crop Classification Model: automatic detection of crop type on a field, retrospectively and during growth seasons
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Zoning: automatic identification of field productivity zones based on EVI/NDVI analysis over a 6-year period. Zoning is the baseline for Variable Rate Technology (VRT) for crop input optimization algorithms including: crop protection, seeding and fertilization.
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Deeply Resolved Sentinel-2 imagery at 1 meter per pixel resolution in growth seasons and on-demand.
These services will be delivered through various API endpoints directly into our clients digital solutions, enabling them to run their analytics and algorithms on top of our baseline data. Here is a high level overview of our technology stack:
Space Added Value
A critical component of our model input is EO-data, in particular, we leverage both Sentinel-1 and 2 data for all of our detection models, including field boundary and seeded acres, crop classification and zoning. The ability to have the high temporal (and spatial) resolution represents a key aspect of the ability for us to deliver highly accurate and timely models throughout the growing season, where EO-data is the most effective datasource. We have developed a proprietary deep neural network
model for deep resolving Sentinel-2 downscaling it from 10m to 1m resolution, which is crucial for analyzing field sizes smaller than 2 hectares, which represents over 83% of the world's agricultural fields. One key aspect we’ve worked hard on is the ability to create multi-temporal data which has significantly improved the accuracy of our Field Delineation Model results and accuracy.
Current Status
DigiFarm has currently delineated over 100 million hectares of field boundaries in over 17 countries as validation projects including areas in the US, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and Germany. We are currently working on securing pilot projects with key clients in over 22 regions in order to secure commercial activity. Currently, DigiFarm launched its initial commercial offerings in 2022 and has closed €1.5M in contract value in 2023 alone with clients such as: Bayer Crop Science, KWS, Limagrain, FMC, Agmatix (ICL Group), Monsanto (FarmRise), Mahindra & Mahindra, CNH Industrial, National Paying Agency of Lithuania (Govt), National Paying Agency of Austria (Govt), USDA among others. Additionally, during 2022 we were a core team of 24 which has grown to 58 by last month (March 2023).
Prime Contractor(s)
