data products & problems in agriculture

Supported by EU projects

29/11/2013Athens, Greece

Open Data for Agriculture

Joint offering by

Intro to Big Data

Charalampos ThanopoulosAgro-Know Technologies

Data Products & Problems in Agriculture

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Intro

• This presentation aims to provide information about the open data in agriculture, examples of agricultural data problems and how these can be described with the drivetrain approach

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Objectives

This presentation aims to provide basic information on data-related issues in agriculture

• Provide an intro to agricultural sciences• Describe the use of open data in agriculture• Define the agricultural data formats• Provide examples of agricultural data problems

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Structure

• The presentation consists of the following sections:– Intro to agriculture & agricultural sciences– Intro to agricultural market & potential– Intro to Open Data in agriculture– Review of agricultural data problems

• 4 agricultural case studies

INTRO TO AGRICULTURE & AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

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About agriculture

Definition 1: “the science or practice of farming, including cultivation of the soil for the growing of crops and the rearing of animals to provide food, wool, and other products”

Definition 2: “the set of activities that transform the environment for the production of animals and plants for human use. Agriculture concerns techniques, including the application of agronomic research”

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About agricultural sciences

• Agricultural science: a broad multidisciplinary field encompassing the parts of exact, natural, economic and social sciences that are used in the practice and understanding of agriculture.– Veterinary science, but not animal science, is often

excluded from the definition

INTRO TO AGRICULTURAL MARKET & POTENTIAL

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a huge market, globally

Food & Agricultural commodities production, http://faostat.fao.org

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some figures

• Food - Gross Production Value globally in 2011: $2,318,966,621

• Agriculture - Gross Production Value globally in 2011: $2,405,001,443

• Investment in agriculture - Gross Capital Stock globally: $5,356,830,000

… they are big

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examples of EU production in 2010

Source: Eurostat

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how many businesses?

INTRO TO OPEN DATA IN AGRICULTURE

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Definition of Open Data

“Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone -

subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and sharealike”

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why open data?

• Open data, especially open government data, is a tremendous resource that is as yet largely untapped– individuals and organisations collect broad range of

different types of data to perform their tasks• Government is particularly significant in this

respect– quantity and centrality of data it collects– most is public data by law, could be made open and

made available for others to use

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closed data

Examples:

…always bad?

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open data for businesses

“new businesses and new business models are beginning to emerge: Suppliers, aggregators, developers, enrichers and enablers”“key link in the value chain for open data is the consumer…direct relevance to the choices individuals make as part of their day-to-day lives”

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Open Data in agriculture: a political priority

“How Open Data can be harnessed to help meet the challenge of sustainably feeding nine billion people by 2050”

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Agriculture is about to experience a “growth shock” in order to cover the exponentially increasing food needs

of the global population

• Key facts about agricultural trends• All demographic and food demand projections suggest that,

by 2050, the planet will face severe food crises due to our inability to meet agricultural demand – by 2050:– 9.3 billion global population, 34% higher than today– 70% of the world’s population will be urban, compared to 49%

today– food production (net of food used for biofuels) must increase by

70%

• According to these projections, and in order to achieve the forecasted food levels by 2050, a total investment of USD 83 billion per annum will be required

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One of the most promising routes to agriculture modernisation is the provision of Open Data to all

interested parties

Open data in agriculture• In an era of Big Data, one of the most promising routes to

bootstrap innovation in agriculture is by the use of Open Data:– e.g. provisioning, maintaining, enriching with relevant metadata,

making openly available a vast amount of information• The use and wide dissemination of these data sets is strongly

advocated by a number of global and national policy makers such as:– The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition G-8 initiative– Food & Agriculture Organization of the UN– DEFRA & DFID in UK– USDA & USAID in the US

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examples of variety & diversity

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data sets

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maps

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photos

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databases

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• publications, theses, reports, other grey literature• educational material and content, courseware• primary data, such as measurements & observations

– structured, e.g. datasets as tables– digitized, e.g. images, videos

• secondary data, such as processed elaborations– e.g. dendrograms, pie charts, models

• provenance information, incl. authors, their organizations and projects

• experimental protocols & methods• social data, tags, ratings, etc.

Agricultural data formats

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.. examples of Big Data in agriculture

REVIEW OF AGRICULTURAL DATA PROBLEMS

CASE STUDY 1A: PRODUCING HIGHLY NUTRITIOUS GREEN VEGETABLES

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Radiki.com

• food scouter collecting edible plants like of wild Taraxacum officinale W. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taraxacumbusiness

• opportunity: gourmet restaurants are looking for such highly nutritious & appreciated greens

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data problems

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data problems

Dried export in US

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Issues identified

1. finding right & relevant only legislation2. finding right, natural drying techniques for

these plants3. finding scientific info on proper packaging

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1: finding right &

relevant only legislation

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2: finding right, natural drying

techniques for these plants

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3: finding scientific info

on proper packaging

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The Drivetrain approach

• Enrich existing bibliographic information• Link bibliographic information with related Web resources• Allow users to access the full-text of a publication and all the information the Web knows about a specific research area in the agricultural domain

• Users’ requirements• Linked data infrastructure• Selection of available data sources

• Existing bibliographic information• Available additional data sources

• Develop algorithms for linking data from various data sources (i.e. DBPedia, World Bank etc) using a linked-data approach involving AGROVOC

CASE STUDY 1B: AGRO-FOOD COOPERATIVE

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• Christos Stamatis – (CEO of the Stevia Coop)

• Crowd funding model– 250 growers– first Greek Stevia

Stevia Hellas

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Issues identified

1. Strengthen the knowledge about food safety2. Where to set up the adding value processing

unit3. Organic portion of the coops cultivation4. Define product price

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• The coop needs to strengthen the knowledge in Food Safety and to follow the standards

• Needs to have access to a portal that provides access to such information

• It could be extended to cover also other food products and domains

• What kind of open data are needed– OER from Educational Institutions– Open courses– Data from the ministry on which are the food standards– Data from FAO e.g. FAO codex

Problem 1: Strengthen the knowledge about food safety

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• Benefits for a stakeholder– personnel that you need to ensure that you will

follow the food safety standards– find the food safety standards that should be

followed– define relevant training for your employees

How such service can help

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• The cooperative would like to have a product on the shelf

• Valuable information– available energy resources– shipping roots– availability of land

Problem 2: Where to set up the adding value processing unit

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• A cooperative would like to invest more in organic cultivation

• Valuable information– market needs in organic products and stevia

specifically– prices of the last years for conventional products– climate conditions– soil quality maps

Problem 3: Organic portion of the coops cultivation

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• Estimate the price for coops’ product • Valuable information

– sugar prices– international prices of stevia– meteo data– import prices in Greece

Problem 4: Define product price

CASE STUDY 2A: PRODUCE TRAINING MATERIAL FOR NATURAL PRODUCTS

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• creating natural effective and holistic products since 1979 to promote health & beauty– Lately involved in the agricultural education and

training– Producing training material, creating courses etc.

related to the ingredients of APIVITA natural products

APIVITA

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APIVITA

finding OER material for natural products

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The Drivetrain approach

Creating additional services for APIVITA web site

• Existing (generic) user requirements• Existing appropriate functionalities• Data models available to support the functionalities of the new web site

• APIVITA-owned content• External Open Educational Resources with related content• Requirements from the expected users of the APIVITA micro-site• Feedback (rating/reviews) of available resources from the APIVITA users

Develop algorithms for • Filtering results from the linked data stes, • Fine-tuning content based on the feedback received• Revising user interface/facets based on new requirements

CASE STUDY 2B: ORGANIZE TRAINING MATERIAL FOR ORGANIC PRODUCTS

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Association of organic products

• SEAE: Sociedad Española de Agricultura Ecologica

• A non-profit organization promoting organic agriculture in Spain

• Organizes training events and Conferences/Workshops– Produces training material and collects

publications from Conference submissions

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Issues identified

• Issue: – Material produced not described with metadata– Only available (partially) in SEAE website – All information only available in Spanish

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The Drivetrain approach

Create a collection of multilingual metadata for describing resources and publish metadata in other websites

• Multilingual metadata authoring tool (e.g. AgLR)• Automatic translation tools• Agricultural educational portals

• Training material produced by SEAE• Conference submissions, publications & proceedings

• Develop algorithms for the selection of content for the SEAE collection• Publication of multilingual metadata in other OER web portals

Thank you!

Charalampos Thanopoulos

Agro-Know Technologies

cthanopoulos@agroknow.gr