Interview: National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC)

Bright future forecast for digital transformation of Thai agricultural sector

Dr. Teera Phatrapornnant, NECTEC Researcher, Intelligent Transportation System Network (ITSN) Research and Development, Research Team of Digital Agricultural Technology (DAT).

Thailand’s agricultural sector is in the process of digital transformation, with the Thailand 4.0 strategy driving this shift and enabling government policies that support the advancement of farms with modern technologies, precision agriculture tools and data-driven smart farming solutions.

The National Electronics and Computer Technology Center (NECTEC) was established under the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) in 1986 to undertake, support and promote Thailand’s research and development of electronics and computer technologies. One of its five industrial targets is to develop a smart farming technology and system to increase efficiency of the digital food chain such as: agricultural zoning management; mobile application for agriculture and registration of farmers; IT to support precision farming via a prediction, warning and communication system; and a plant disease/contamination diagnostic system.

UPDATE interviewed Dr. Teera Phatrapornnant, NECTEC Researcher, Intelligent Transportation System Network (ITSN) Research and Development, Research Team of Digital Agricultural Technology (DAT). He was formerly Head of the Machine Vision Laboratory (MVL) at the NECTEC Advanced Automation and Electronics Research Unit (AAERU).

Since when and why has Thailand adopted digital agriculture technology and artificial intelligence (AI) in the agriculture sector?

NECTEC has brought digital technology to agricultural sector for more than 10 years. Digital technology enable us to digitise data while AI assists us to diagnose and analyse huge amounts of agriculture-related data necessary for decision-making as well as they replace manpower in some areas where it is lacking, such as experts in rice disease. If we can collect sufficient data for training a machine and then build automated system, there will be good decision-making support.

Digital technology used in “Precision Farming” is a combination of various technologies, such as information technology, embedded systems, machine vision, photonics, wireless sensor network, to understand and manage the crop conditions in order to increase yield and quality. Precision farming practice can save cost and environment, for example, with conditions of soil and crop surveys, fertilisers and pesticides are applied in the right amount and time to ensure maximum efficiency. Data mining in agriculture are important to farmers in order for them properly plan the management of their production areas. NECTEC has developed a decision support system, called Agri-Map, for Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOAC) in order to analyse huge amounts of agricultural and related data, with almost 200 layers collected from all over Thailand, which supports plantation zoning that shows whether an area’s conditions are suitable for selected plants.

Agri-Map

What is the background of the Digital Agricultural Technology research team and its role in developing innovative agriculture to achieve the results of the BCG model?

Actually, there are many laboratories and teams in NECTEC involved in the development of innovative agriculture, including other national centres in NSTDA. The developed smart farming prototypes will be disseminated to farmers or private sector in many methods, e.g. licensing. NSTDA set up the Agricultural Technology and Innovation Management Institute (AGRITEC) in 2016 to act as a one-stop service centre that provides technologies and innovations to support Thailand’s agricultural sector.

Our research team has experience for more than 10 years and mainly covers the area of digital agricultural technology for crops and aquaculture. The objective is to increase crop productivity by using automatic sensing and control systems, e.g. for plant watering, paddle wheel spinning, fertilizing or environment controlling such as greenhouse farming. Often, we work across labs or outside our centre for setup multidisciplinary team in order to provide efficient solutions for farming production. Our alliances include BIOTEC, MTEC, NANMOTEC, universities, governmental organization, e.g. Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOAC), companies from private sector, oversea research centres and the farmers themselves. To support the BCG economy, for example, improving cassava yield, developing new rice varieties, we provide digital technology for achieving the best possible productivity.

In what areas is digital agriculture technology used today?

Digital technology can be adopted for various plant and animal farms in many areas in Thailand. For example, a photonic biosensing platform for aquaculture has been developed, for monitoring bacteria growth in shrimp pond, and used by 15 farms in Eastern Thailand last year. We have implemented IoT smart farming projects in about 30 farms in co-operation with Total Access Communication (dtac) and 65 farms in co-operation with Chachoengsao province. Our successful watering system is also being piloted in some ASEAN countries such as Brunei and Myanmar.

What are the supportive factors for the widespread adoption of digital agricultural technology in Thailand?

It starts with IT literacy of farmers and their opportunity to use digital technology. Older generation or traditional farmers have their own collective wisdom for farming and do not want to adopt modern knowledge, even though MOAC demonstrates several types of smart farming technology through its learning centre. The second supportive factor is the availability of digital communication infrastructure such as LoRaWAN, long range wide area network, 4G/5G network, high-speed network that supports Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud, Big Data storage and so forth.

Is digital farming costly? How much budget should farmers have on average?

Actually, it depends on a farmer’s business model how he can take the benefit from the advanced tools for making a profit. It would cost about 40,000 baht to establish a conventional greenhouse, or, with an additional IoT controller, between 10,000 and 200,000 baht for a more conditioncontrolled greenhouse. It can be seen that smart farming is costly. That’s why we initiate an Open Innovation project to let the farmers can touch an opensource smart farming technology and cut off some investment costs. Farmers can get our starter packages and making a smart farming tool by themselves. In the first step, we provide the HandySense, an IoT plant watering system. Anyone can download its blueprint and software for free.

What will be the trend of Thailand’s precision agricultural market in the next five years?

Precision farming in Thailand is projected to grow about 10% in the next five years. Most areas of growth would be the simple precision farming system, such as using a plant watering controller. Driverless vehicles are too early to adopt in Thailand as the majority of farmers are smallholders; advanced machinery will be mostly adopted by large agricultural companies while machine rental is cheaper for individual farmers. Drones that are mostly used in pesticide spraying will become more affordable and local companies can produce their own drone by adapting Chinese drone technology.

Interview by Chadaphan Maliphan, GTCC Publications and Communications Manager