Magazin: PreGa 2016 – bionics is knocking at the door

The latest technological trends in agriculture, from Hungary and abroad, were presented at the 2nd PREGA Conference and Exhibition. Nearly 300 companies and more than 500 individuals were present at the event organised by Agroinform.hu, the Hungarian Chamber of Agriculture (NAK) and the Agricultural Informatics Cluster.

Szilárd Gombos, the president of the cluster told that the latest infocommunication solutions such as Big Data, IoT, automation, the cloud or sensors are becoming more and more important in agricultural informatics too. Modern technology can help farmers to operate their farms more efficiently, and they don’t have to become IT experts for this. One of the main objectives of the Agricultural Informatics Cluster is to integrate smart solutions – already existing at startups – into a central smart farming system, connecting individual tools, machinery and sensors.

Dávid Csaba Mezei, deputy state secretary responsible for strategic affairs in agricultural and rural development spoke about the imminent paradigm shift in the world’s food production. Agricultural subsidies aim at developing intensive production such as horticulture and animal farming, together with investments in innovation. NAK vice president Tibor Zászlós, who is a practicing farmer himself, is of the opinion that precision agriculture has a positive effect on research work in other sectors too. He underlined that teaching the latest technologies needs to form part of university education.

Csaba Gyuricza, president of the Agricultural and Rural Development Agency (MVH) called attention to the fact that smart farming isn’t about substituting human workforce in agriculture with technological solutions. If the sector’s IT background is strengthened, the number of mistakes made in production can be reduced. There is great need for this as agriculture’s annual output is HUF 2,500 billion and we have to prepare for the period after 2020.

Kenneth A. Sudduth, president of the International Society of Precision Agriculture has been researching smart farming solutions for 30 years. This time he analysed the process of getting from data to knowledge and decision-making. Simon Blackmore, director of the National Centre for Precision Farming introduced what agricultural robots and smart machines are capable of. KITE Zrt. CEO Levente Szabó talked about how the integrator started developing precision technologies in 2011.