Nowadays, innovations in Precision Farming are mostly bound to further developments and new solution approaches on the technical level. However, for efficient service provision it is important to work on strategies for application of these technologies. To satisfy customers’ demands for highly specialized methods and detailed results collaboration between various companies in service consortiums is often required. In doing so, every company can provide its proven and evidentially effective approaches in a productive way. Likewise, the scalability of service approaches represents a challenge, while business models should be constructed limiting risks due to seasonality or weather. Thus, innovation in precision farming has to be raised to the next level.

 

Innovation dimensions in PF are hardware, software, and processes. Using hardware like sensors, it is possible to acquire data that can be monitored, interpreted and processed by software. In addition, the process dimension is relevant for the linkage of both levels. We argue that past research mainly focused on advancements of the first two dimensions, whereas process aspects were not sufficiently considered. Therefore, the paper follows a threefold approach, including all three dimensions. The presented solution focusses on crop production, consisting of a newly developed, innovative soil sampling device as exemplary hardware, a web-based software for visualizing, calculating and managing the corresponding results in terms of nutrient distribution maps as well as application maps and a process structure to link hard- and software in an efficiently as possible way.

 

The exemplary use-case consists of the following three components.

Soil sampler “on-the-go”. With the soil sampler “on-the-go”, a totally new soil sampling concept was developed to accelerate the soil sampling process in the field as well as assuring a high soil sampling quality. The unit is mounted to the back of an off-road car and is powered from the car’s on-board electronics only.  Without stopping the car, the soil cores are taken in the soil sampling zone. The soil sampling depth can be adjusted between 0-10 and 0-30 cm. The soil sampling velocity on the field is between 10-13 km/h. Thus, a soil sample on a 3-ha-grid cell, consisting of 20 cores, can be taken in 3 minutes. By adding the unit to a car, the service provider can easily drive between different farms to offer a fast service.

 

AgriPort. The web-based software AgriPort was developed a) to provide a cloud based precision farming data management tool where the user can start immediately with the agronomic analyses of his information and b) to turn the site-specific information into agronomic recommendations. Therefore, agronomic recommendation rules are included into AgriPort. With a few clicks, the user gets the application file in the right data format that is needed for steering of the site-specific application of e.g. base fertilizers. With the web-based approach, also the crop consultant can have access to the data and provide consultation. Additionally, the monitoring of all service steps makes the entire process highly transparent for the customer and the provider.

 

Information-production-system (IPS). IPS is a collection of defined business processes and corresponding tools which support the service provision. The software consists of two modules. While the module IPSmobil supports the work on the field by automated data acquisition and protocol generation, the module IPShq provides the interaction between all associated service partners by media-disruption-free communication. Therefore, adequate interfaces needed to be defined and tools for data processing had to be integrated. This highly standardized service provision leads to an increased productivity and quality.

 

In this paper we argue that to provide precision farming services effectively and efficiently, innovation has to be done in three dimensions. The three dimensions comprise development of hardware (e.g. soil sampler “on-the-go”), the development of software (AgriPort) and the definition of processes to link the former two (IPS). To illustrate this postulation, the development of a new solution for precision farming in crop production has been described using a case study.

 

Beyond a more efficient provision of precision farming services, the three modules are the precondition to sell not only the service but also the overall system as a franchise concept. While SME continue consumption of the (optimized) services, large customers are enabled to provide the soil sampling service themselves by acquiring the overall system.