Prospects in Agricultural Engineering in the Information Age -Technological Developments for the Producer and the Consumer

The evolution towards the information society of the 21 century is affecting people’s lives, communities, businesses, organizations and nations of the whole world. The borders of this exploding revolution are being reshaped by powerful new ITs such as Internet, ATM, and wireless communications. Communications today dominate the evolution and are expressed in agriculture not only as wired farms and precision agriculture but also by the great possibilities for remote-training, remote-support and e-commerce. Profound changes are expected in the dynamics of the marketplace and the competition between companies and between countries. National borders are fading and new virtual barriers are erected by the information infrastructure. The most consequential property of these new accomplishments is the ability to diffuse into agricultural areas and give every component of agriculture in the world the same competitive power and also make all a citizens of the global city with “equal rights and opportunities”. A remote farmer may soon be sitting in his “intelligent room” and will feel comfortable as being in the center of the global city. This virtual world will have very realistic results and we must help farmers and agribusinesses become citizens in this new world. The nations of the world are in the race to build what is called National/Global Information Infrastructure (NII/GII). This paper reviews the recent advances in IT applications for agricultural process management as well as the new possibilities to protect consumer aspects. It cites several disparate examples, ranging from the field of electronics, sensors and biosensors to the speaking plant approach, as enhanced by the use of Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) and more recently by evolutionary algorithms. The acceptance of more complete systems, like the real time management systems of MACQU and the integrated systems in precision farming is discussed. The role of “agents” is also addressed in the paper as this new paradigm for programming intelligence can be used to make systems more cooperative and also to control uncertain processes with constraints and conflicts. The case and the consequences of recent development of a standard (ISO 11783 and DIN 9684) for farm equipment communications based on CAN, are also presented. The development of standards is a crucial component for the successful in-farm integration of IT developments. Without such guidance for low losses in new developments the cost for agriculture will be very high. Agricultural engineering associations have great responsibilities but also big challenges and many opportunities for valuable services for the benefit of society. CIGR-Ejournal, invited paper 2 Many mechanization standards were developed in the 2nd half of the 20 century and now the shift is to information standards for future decades.