The DLG as a guest at xarvio: Opportunities and challenges of digital agriculture

 

Big visit to xarvio: The German Agricultural Society (DLG) was a guest at xarvio’s headquarters in Langenfeld on March 13th and 14th to gain valuable insights into the latest developments in digital farming. The agenda included the presentation of xarvio’s FIELD MANAGER and SCOUTING applications as well as an open discussion on the opportunities and challenges in the digitalization of agriculture.
 

Alexandra Gladbach, xarvio Global Commercialization Manager, and Andreas Johnen, xarvio Senior Expert Agronomy, hosted the event and revealed the features and advantages of xarvio applications. Johnen presented a timeline to drive the point home: Data driven agriculture is not a completely new phenomenon. As early as 25 years ago, farmers used data, documented it and used IT programs to create forecasts and models to optimize their work. Today, however, technological advances and the networking of different systems means that farmers can now benefit from a vast amount of data on a much larger scale and in a shorter period of time.

Digital solutions to support conventional agriculture
 

This is precisely what the majority of farmers are well aware of and they see digital solutions less as a danger than as a support for conventional work, explained Prof. Dr. Hand W. Griepentrog, Chairman of the DLG Committee. “The digitalization of agriculture helps us make even better use of existing resources. In concrete terms, this means that we need digital solutions in order to generate the greatest possible output with as few resources as possible.” This could also enhance the image of farmers who have recently come under fire. He added, “Many farmers are making great efforts to work sustainably. We must make it clear to people that our work is an important social achievement. This should also be acknowledged more by the public.” Some participants at the event explained that better, transparent documentation of agricultural work using digital solutions such as FIELD MANAGER could also contribute to this revaluation of the modern farmer’s persona.

 

Compatibility of interfaces as a challenge
 

While these digital solutions bring with them great advantages, they also create new challenges. Even though digitalization in agriculture continues to progress, there are still technical hurdles to be overcome, members of the conference confirmed. In particular, the interfaces between different components are in many cases not yet sufficiently coordinated. For example, digital field maps still cannot be seamlessly integrated into other systems such as FIELD MANAGER. “We know about the interface problem. This is a challenge that affects all of us involved in the digitization of agriculture. But when I see the rapid developments that have taken place in digital farming in recent years, I am very confident that we will soon be able to come up with optimized solutions,” explained Andreas Johnen. At the end of an informative two-day event, everyone in attendance agreed that digitization presents the opportunity to make a lasting difference to agriculture.