Good practice:

Successful, sensor and data driven plant growing with 17 years of success

Farkas Ltd. was established in 2003 with an objective of testing and if proving to be effective, implementing data driven solutions of precision farming. The problem was how to provide for optimised and effective plant growing based on data measured. Farkas Ltd. is good example for showcasing development and use experiences gained during 17 years of precision agriculture ranging from a manufacturing type of IT development and data management to the complex, decision supporting Management Information System.

Initially company staff took measurements of different soil macro and mezzo elements and for processed the “manually” collected information by its own software background. This process was coupled with hardware development to deliver precision soil testing, differentiated nutrient supply and weed control. Obtained data was recorded manually during one production period. From 2013 the “AgroVir”, i.e. a Management Information System integrates all data obtained at different places of production (ploughing, sowing, weeding, harvesting, selling). In this way, the appropriate amount of fertilizer and crop protection for the given area can be calculated according to the needs of the soil and the plant. Crop yields can be increased and environmental and soil pressures can be reduced.

Main stakeholders are agricultural university, IT service and agricultural machinery suppliers, commercial bank. Indirect beneficiaries are farms facing similar precision farming challenges.

Financial Information is not available,
Partners of Farkas Ltd. are: University of West Hungary, Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences; IT service providers and suppliers of agricultural machinery, commercial credit provider banks.

As local Good Practice, its importance is national: showcases how a middle sized agrarian company with in cereals value chain can build data-based agricultural production step by step so that it can operate in an economical and environmentally friendly way, thus aligning with the EU's green strategy.The Good Practice is a reference point to smaller agricultural producers to showcase practical application and benefits of data driven, integrated precision farming.

Precision farming economic figures are more effective than of traditional production, but benefit is not reaped at wholesale/stock exchange.
Environment protection benefits are obvious, but are not reflected by market prices.
In organisational terms vision driven, courageous management is needed.

It is a Good Practice that has focus on technical, organisational and economic aspects of precision farming. It is also good example of agricultural, data based development for an agrarian company who operates among modest financial circumstances but eager to pilot new technologies. This means that precision, data based farming in plant growing is not privilege of large-scale farms.

The technology is widely available across Europe by several IT and machine suppliers. Despite the whole process is automated, based on integrated use of the data available, the most important phase is – if it can be identified at all – the nutrient management plan being in comparison with the planned yields, which prevents overloading of the soil and plants. The applied hardware – tractors, fertilizer spreaders, for example – is linked to the point measurement based company operation IT system that enables less pollutant and effective operation of plant production farms.