IBM has announced a collaboration with the Flint River Partnership to deploy new conservation measures to enhance agricultural efficiency by up to 20 percent. The Flint River Partnership (which includes the Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service and The Nature Conservancy) together with the University of Georgia and IBM, will support farmers in the Lower Flint River Basin of Georgia in making more informed irrigation-scheduling decisions to conserve water, improve crop yields and mitigate the impact of future droughts.
The Lower Flint River Basin is one of the most diverse and ecologically rich river systems in the southeastern US. The area is also the epicenter of agriculture in Georgia, with its 27 counties contributing more than $2 billion in farm-based revenue annually to the region’s economy. Irrigation is central to production and because of the area’s unique hydrogeology, maximizing water conservation helps support sensitive habitat systems.
Building upon a successful irrigation model and other water-conservation measures already in place, the Flint River Partnership is using IBM’s Deep Thunder precision weather forecasting to help farmers conserve water and improve crop yields. Because the forecasts will be available on mobile devices, farmers will have 24-hour access to critical weather information in conjunction with other relevant field data. The Partnership is also leveraging IBM Softlayer to manage data flows and automate irrigation recommendations, allowing farmers to determine how much water a specific crop needs at various stages of its life cycle.
“Our job is to help farmers conserve water. Irrigation scheduling based on highly accurate weather forecasts and real-time field data will optimize decision making and consequently reduce resource use,” said Marty McLendon, chairman of the Flint River Soil and Water Conservation District. “Having access to such forecasts and field data on a mobile platform makes the data relevant, so that we can make proactive irrigation scheduling decisions on the fly.”
The integration of complex data streams generated by GPS-enabled farm equipment and in-field sensors with IBM’s weather-forecasting technology delivered to mobile devices will provide 72-hours’ advance notice of weather in the Flint region, allowing farmers to be more prepared to make decisions on when to irrigate, plant, fertilize, and deploy labor resources.
In other recent IBM news, in December the company unveiled its eighth annual "IBM 5 in 5" — a list of innovations that have the potential to change the way people work, live and interact during the next five years, and the tech company’s role in making them a reality. The tech giant says over time computers will get smarter and more customized through interactions with data, devices and people — a new era in computing that will lead to breakthroughs that will amplify human abilities and guide us in numerous and powerful new ways. And in January, a team of research scientists at IBM and Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) announced they may have cracked the code for safely destroying the persistent, antibiotic-resistant and sometimes-deadly superbug MRSA. IBM said the researchers made a nanomedicine breakthrough by converting common plastic materials such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into non-toxic and biocompatible materials designed to specifically target and attack fungal infections.
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Published Apr 28, 2014 3pm EDT / 12pm PDT / 8pm BST / 9pm CEST