Think Global, Act Local: Bridging the Gap Between Industrial and Urban Farms Through Cutting Edge Technologies

By 2050, the global population is projected to reach 9.7 billion people. One of the largest challenges both globally and locally is how to feed this growing population. On Earth Day, I had the privilege to speak at the IoT.ATL Living Labs Kickoff in Atlanta, Georgia, representing AGCO as one the program’s sponsors. IoT.ATL is a consortium of Metro Atlanta’s top innovators who are paving an inclusive way to urban development and leveraging technology for good. As part of this mission, the Living Labs program focuses on testing and validating Internet of Things (IoT)/technology to ensure equity, inclusion and sustainability, with the first challenge addressing food resilience and urban sustainability through cutting edge agtech solutions.

John Rahiya speaking at the IoT.ATL Kickoff Event

Iot.ATL challenges entrepreneurs to create local, sustainable, and productive agricultural systems to maximize yields and output while minimizing input costs and the environmental impact. The winning solutions are installed throughout the Atlanta community, showcasing the potential of these inventive agtech systems. Once validated and scalable, these solutions will be ready for installation around the greater Atlanta area, shrinking the food deserts and ultimately, adding more (high-tech) solutions to fight hunger across the city while creating a blueprint for cities around the world.

Why is AGCO Involved?

This inaugural Living Labs program highlights the benefits of public-private partnerships and developing the potential of innovators in and around our community. Headquartered in Duluth, Georgia, AGCO’s vision of high-tech solutions for farmers feeding the world ties directly into this local initiative. While urban farming is not our core business, we’ll start to see more and more overlap between the smart farming practices used in large, industrial farms and those in the local, urban farms. Some interesting examples being deployed today, or in the near future, include robot swarms, data at a plant-by-plant basis, farm management information system (FMIS) applications, big data, and Internet of Things for Farming (IoTF).

Community engagements, such as the IoT.ATL Living Labs and smart farming hackathons, address the needs of the local populations with innovations that are ultimately scalable to the global level. AGCO’s Fuse smart farming and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) teams are actively involved in virtually every aspect of the agriculture supply chain. With our global reach, we can maximize our social, economic and environmental impact in our local communities around the world.

The world needs programs like IoT.ATL Living Labs. People face hunger every day. Food deserts exist. These are global challenges, and Atlanta is no different. That’s why I’m so excited AGCO is supporting the Agtech Challenge, lending our global agtech and agronomic expertise to make a difference in the local community. While the first pilots are just being launched, AGCO is thrilled to be a part of this initiative and see the impact it has on our community.

To learn more about the winners’ solutions of the Agtech Challenge, visit here.

To learn more about how AGCO technologies are making farmers more efficient, profitable, and sustainable, visit http://www.fusesmartfarming.com/.

To learn more about AGCO’s Corporate Social Responsibility approach to sustainability, visit https://www.agcocorp.com/commitment/sustainability.html.

Written by: John Rahiya

John is the Senior Business Development Manager for AGCO’s global Fuse smart farming team. Connect with John on Twitter @rahiyaj or on LinkedIn.