A dozen farmers, the National Farmers Union (NFU) and EBLEX attended a brainstorm recently to develop the ultimate smartphone app for farmers.  The brainstorm was hosted by T-Mobile and facilitated by a leading app developer to come up with low-cost apps that would help those in the agriculture industry.

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As part of the brainstorm, one idea was put into practice on the day. A real cow had a QR code sprayed on it. This code links to a webpage so farmers can check its provenance and vaccination history instantly using a smartphone.

Other smartphone agri-apps suggested by farmers during the brainstorm include:
 
 

• Anti-rustling app - with sheep costing £1,000 each and pure breeds virtually irreplaceable, sheep and livestock rustling is a big problem for farmers.  One farmer at the brainstorm recently lost 50 sheep at a cost of £50,000.  This app, inspired by the 2008 film, The Dark Knight, links to a central camera located on a pole in the livestock field.  The infrared camera identifies each animal by their heat signal.  It sends push alerts to the farmer's phone if the number of heat signals decreases.  It also uploads this data to a central site, alerting other farmers in the area to potential rustling.

• Real-time farm management app - using the smartphone's GPS function, farmers can plot their land - they identify the area they want to calculate and physically go to each corner and take a GPS reading.  From here, the farmer then calculates the approximate harvest size based on the choice of crops, which links to real-time index prices via 3G.  The app would layer different information on their maps such as livestock in each field, track their movements and automatically upload this data to Defra to cut red tape.

• QR code cow app - farmers can tag their cattle with chips to identify them.  However, the scanning equipment costs £1,500 each.  Instead, farmer would brand their cows with unique QR codes which, when scanned, would link people to the cow's personalised webpage which includes its age, inoculation history, breed, etc. Any free QR code scanner app would work with the code which reduces costs for farmers. A QR (Quick Response) code is basically a square bar code which, when read by a QR code scanner, links to a web page giving information about the product or in this case beast. Smartphones can be turned onto QR scanners using a suitable app.

• Disease management app - farmers take photos of arable crop diseases on their smartphones, the app then uses visual search to automatically identify the disease.  The app matches disease identifiers such as specks on crop leaves to identify alternaria canker.  Once the disease is identified,  experts can provide live advice via a video link, removing the need for expensive callout fees.

• Health and safety app - employees on the farm install this location-aware-app so when they use dangerous equipment, it lets them know if they are trained to use it.  The app links to the individual employee's health and safety records, which are stored in the cloud.  In an emergency, the app can shut down the equipment and call the emergency services with voice control.

• Flying sheepdog drone app - farmers will be able to supplement their sheepdogs with flying drones they control with smartphones.  A video feed on the phone will allow farmers to see what the drone sees and control their flocks of sheepremotely.  

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