Good Practice - Inspirational Idea
Data-based decisions for better farming
Farmers are increasingly using new technologies to gather and process data to deliver economic and environmental insights and increase farm performance. Smart ways to collect, manage and share data can help farmers work more precisely, efficiently and sustainably. The Swedish innovative project ‘Better decisions for cultivation strategy’ is creating a digital data service for farmers, advisors and researchers to optimise their daily decisions.
Summary
Project manager Anna-Carin Almqvist explains: “Our service will provide data from seven years of field trials across Sweden, registered in the Nordic Field Trial System, merged with geological and weather data. It will allow users to search a range of crops and varieties, and compare different varieties and characteristics, including region and trial year, soil and cultivation type, yield and weather parameters, straw strength and thousand grain weight, but also different diseases and more. By entering their on-farm conditions, farmers will get customised results that are relevant for their farm.”
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The service now covers cereals, legumes, potatoes and oil crops, for both conventional and organic farmers. It will offer Swedish farmers and advisors user-friendly cultivation information to help choose the best varieties, improve crop management, use resources efficiently, cut costs, and improve business value, helping them to become more competitive. Anna-Carin continues: “We are currently running tests with pilot groups, and are exploring ways to improve the service with new data access points. We want to exchange with other initiatives across Europe that are creating digital services with farm data, to discuss best practices and ways for us to create an optimal user experience.