Biogenic Value Creation and Smart Farming

Digital Agriculture?

Visual computing is an invaluable tool in agriculture: for everything from crop farming and animal husbandry across paludiculture to marine farming.

To digitally drive the further evolution of these practices, our team leverages technologies that include remote exploration, sensors, modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. We continually investigate ways to optimally match new technologies emerging from research to practical applications in need of solutions. Our ultimate aim is to advance the digital revolution in agriculture.

Via scientific and practical collaboration, we ensure effective and profitable integration in existing infrastructure.

  • Our focus is on applying visualization and digitalization to agricultural practices with the goal of promoting sustainable, resource-conserving agriculture that also produces fewer emissions.
  • Particularly within our region, we are also striving to become an innovation hub for biogenic value creation.
  • We operate a network of agricultural practitioners, companies, investors, and scientists (both Fraunhofer staff and externals).
  • We are good at supporting ideation processes and developing appropriate business concepts.
  • Analysis tools and/or digital decision-making aids based on data can enable farms to operate more efficiently and sustainably.

Combining Different Themes to Create Products of Practical Relevance

Consulting on innovations for biogenic value creation

  • Development of business models (e.g., CO2 certificates)
  • Networks
  • Market knowledge

Digital visualization of farming data

  • Processing
  • Analyses

Digital intelligence from farming data

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Models ->
  • Networked ecosystems

Digital products

  • Back end
  • Front end
  • Product design and testing
  • User testing (also for others)

Practical Applications for our Projects

Visual computing in stalls

There are plans to develop digital concepts for stalls in cooperation with the Research Institute for Farm Animal Biology (FBN) in Dummerstorf.

In practice, due to the high complexity of multisensory systems, it is rare for herds to be managed while making comprehensive and systematic measurements of animal wellbeing parameters. In many cases, only conductivity sensors are used.

Extensive technical planning and configuration work is now required to capture animal wellbeing parameters in different environments (e.g., stalls and pastures) on an ongoing basis. No simple plug & play solution is currently available for providing the multisensory infrastructure, data storage, data processing, automatic evaluation, and decision-making support that dairy farmers need.

A plug & play sensor and data platform is therefore going to be developed to close the gap between available solutions and their practical use.

More on the Fraunhofer center “Biogenic Value Creation and Smart Farming”

At the Fraunhofer center “Biogenic Value Creation and Smart Farming,” Fraunhofer institutes based in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bavaria are jointly studying and developing innovative technologies for future agriculture while striving to make these highly adapted, automated, and sustainable – geared to the specific regional requirements in each case.