«Smart Farming»: Background, projects and opportunities

Drive over wheat fields and closely observe the stalks of wheat grow? This is what the cameras of the world's first field phenotyping system (FIP) at ETH Zurich can do. At the Research Station for Plant Sciences in Lindau, more than 15 groups from the Departments of Environmental Systems Sciences and Biology are conducting research on this topic. The newly opened Agrovet Strickhof Competence Centre also offers a lot of intelligent technology; they have robotic systems that milk the cows and simultaneously keep records of feed quantities, weight of the animals and milk production. In the respiration chamber, they also analyse how the type of feed affects greenhouse gas and methane production.

Robots on the Field – Soon Commonplace in Switzerland?

Within the framework of the EU research project «Flourish», a so-called quadricopter communicates with a drone in order to destroy weeds in an efficient and environmentally friendly way, either with a targeted, local release of pesticides or mechanically with a metal piston. The «Anymal» walking robot developed at the ETH is less invasive: This machine, which is roughly the size of a dog, can walk freely through fields and measure soil moisture and nutrients in the soil, for example.

Will such robots soon completely replace humans in agriculture? «Don't worry. It will be a very long time before such or similar machines will be in mass use» says Achim Walter. As part of the «Innofarm» project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, ETH Zurich is investigating very specifically which technical, agronomic and socio-economic factors make it possible to use innovative information and communication technologies for sustainable Swiss agriculture.

«Smart Farming» at ETH Zürich

At the event of 15 June, ETH President Lino Guzzella emphasised the role of ETH as a creator of innovation and multi-faceted actor in the Swiss research environment. Federal council Schneider-Ammann advocated an efficient use of information and communication technology to decrease the burden of administration of farmers via a newly established platform called «Barto» for data exchange between farmers and multiple institutions. The event was organized by the ETH Studio AgroFood, ETH Global, and the World Food System Center. The ETH Studio, whose Steering Group is led by Achim Walter, is an important player in developing curriculum for this changing digital landscape.

The presentations were followed up by a discussion panel moderated by Tobias Müller (SRF). The panelists Corinne Müller (Agricultural engineering Müller, Siblingen), Hanspeter Hunkeler (farmer and member of think tank ‘Vision Landwirtschaft’), Francis Egger (Swiss Farmers Union) and Michael Buser (fenaco) agreed that the potential of new technologies is highly interesting from a Swiss perspective, but that proprietary questions of data use are a challenging task that needs to be addressed before farmers will really be able to profit from these developing technologies.