AR for Crop Preservation in Food-Insecure Countries

Food and nutrition security remains a huge challenge across the globe, particularly as the frequency of extreme climate events increases. The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) indicates the level of hunger/starvation present in a particular country or region due to insufficient crop supply. The Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture (FSSA) “resilience-building thematic mechanism aims to ensure the complementarity of instruments for high-impact aid. It had an indicative budget of €525 million over the 2014-2020 period.” Additionally, “sustainable food security” remains a priority for the world economy, with the EU Project Horizon 2020 work programme identifying the following immediate needs for further research and innovation:
– Identification of tools and methods, mainly at the farm level for soil remediation and balanced fertilizers application,
– Identification of agricultural system approach that can enhance quality of soils for food production,
– To raise public awareness about soil as a crucial global resource,
– Enhance EU-China long-term cooperation in land use optimization for global food and environmental security.

This research topic focuses on how AR can be used to permit farmers to investigate their crops, while layering additional information such as water saturation metrics from IoT data, as well as even potentially an AI component that could categorize types of erosion and/or plant disease and provide real-time feedback with regards to required human intervention. The use of AR in agriculture could be adopted or subsidized by fertilizer corporations, water providers, and other members of an agriculture ecosystem. When those in the field use AR, providers of products and services would be able to connect from a distance and provide real-time advice for farmers and other end-clients.

This study would aim to specifically measure the impact of data-informed AR on crop preservation, particularly in food-insecure countries.

Stakeholders

Government officials and policymakers in World Bank Group and UN nations, social performance and impact executives in large, global organizations, particularly those with a large social license to operate, sustainability/innovation groups in large corporations, executives and sales teams in agriculture

Possible Methodologies

The proposed research would need to enroll and engage rural farmers in food-insecure areas, preferably those in which agriculture is practiced in remote or at-risk locations (e.g. retired mine site, etc.). The research would also need to develop or expand and leverage databases of photos for local plant and soil conditions. Rural farmers would need to be onboarded into technology pilots, and potential ecosystem partners (e.g. water providers, fertilizer providers, etc.) would need to be identified. The principal investigator would develop partnerships with a host corporation and community. Research would include IoT data pre- and post- introduction of AR intervention via A/B trial scenarios, potentially with a few different levels of AR intervention. Then researchers would collect data about post-intervention behaviors and crop status. Post-study outcomes could be analyzed and recommendations developed for future implementation.

Research Program

This study could also be extended to explore benefits in the mining industry, when mine sites are retired, as AR could help companies ensure that the communities in the process of transitioning to different revenue sources have the tools that they need to ensure the sustainability of the land post-asset. Additionally, the research methods could be extended or support other research programs associated with metals and mining, water preservation, education, policy, upskilling, and sustainability.

Miscellaneous Notes

Crop preservation research recommendations published by the European Union provide support for this research topic.

Keywords

United Nations, Sustainable Development Goals, sustainability, policy, education, skill development, socio-economic effects, artificial intelligence, IoT, crop preservation, farming, agriculture, water preservation, social aspects, social and economic effects

Research Agenda Categories

Business, End User and User Experience, Industries

Expected Impact Timeframe

Near

Related Publications

Using the words in this topic description and Natural Language Processing analysis of publications in the AREA FindAR database, the references below have the highest number of matches with this topic:

• Babu, N. S. C. (2017). Keynote 1: Internet of Things(IoT) and augmented reality for e-learning. 2017 5th National Conference on E-Learning & E-Learning Technologies (ELELTECH).
• Xi, M., Adcock, M., & McCulloch, J. (2018). Future Agriculture Farm Management using Augmented Reality. 2018 IEEE Workshop on Augmented and Virtual Realities for Good (VAR4Good).
• Al Akil, D., Ahmed, V., & Saboor, S. (2020). The Utilization of Augmented Reality Technologies within the Engineering Curricula – Opportunities and Challenges. 2020 IFEES World Engineering Education Forum – Global Engineering Deans Council (WEEF-GEDC).
• Sonderegger, A., Ribes, D., Henchoz, N., & Groves, E. (2019). Food Talks: Visual and Interaction Principles for Representing Environmental and Nutritional Food Information in Augmented Reality. 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct).
• Todorovic, V., Milic, N., & Lazarevic, M. (2019). Augmented Reality in Food production traceability – use case. IEEE EUROCON 2019 -18th International Conference on Smart Technologies.

More publications can be explored using the AREA FindAR research tool.

Author

Jennifer Rogers

Last Published (yyyy-mm-dd)

2021-08-31

Go to Enterprise AR Research Topic Interactive Dashboard