Democratizing digital tools for sustainable agriculture

We have seen it in the news and are feeling it around us. Government and environmental agencies are creating more awareness around the link between food production and its environmental impact. 

More restrictive policies and regulations are putting pressure on farmers, where supermarkets source their food from and the price of food for the end consumer. 

Enterprises throughout the food production supply chain have spent years researching and building out capabilities leveraging the latest technologies and data getting more visibility and insights on how to become more efficient, productive, and sustainable. These innovations are typically expensive, and their coverage fairly limited compared to the number of stakeholders still producing the same way it has been done for decades.

Microsoft Research has been working on developing digital toolkits that farmers can leverage to deal with the mounting environmental and economic pressure. A key principle of the toolkits is to make it available to a wider set of stakeholders by keeping the cost of the technology low and using technology frameworks setting a base to speed up innovation and practical applications in this area.

The Microsoft Research project is called "Project FarmVibes". Previously known as "FarmBeats". Project FarmVibes - Microsoft Research

The research toolkits have matured to a point where they can be released for wider public use. The first open-source release is FarmVibes.AI (FarmVibes.AI - Microsoft Research). It is a sample set of algorithms aimed at inspiring the research and data science community to advance data-driven agriculture. More toolkits will follow soon.

Calling all researchers, data scientists, software engineers to get more involved in this area. Build a prototype, upload it to GitHub and participate in a growing community actively using democratized digital tools working towards a more sustainable agriculture.

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