Youth invents automated farm factory

Stories by John Oba

A youth, Mr Matthews Ajibola Oluwatosin, has invented a multipurpose low cost self –Farming Cloud Computing (IoT) system for tropical farming and scalable automated precision farming computer and software package designed from the ground up with today’s technologies.
Oluwatosin in a chat with Blueprint said the invention referred to as Farm Factory, makes agriculture effortless with its vertical farming culture by incorporate artificial intelligent protocol with differences sensors which intelligently monitor, automate and collect data via cloud computing as related to agriculture production.
According to him, the entire system is numerically controlled and thus fully automated from the sowing of seeds to harvest, saying the hardware is designed to be simple, scalable, and hackable.
“Using Farm-Factory Mobile application package, with our open source web cloud server, the user can graphically design their farm to their desired specifications, upload numerical control code to the hardware and Monitor the plant condition via the web cloud server.
“Other features of the software include storing and manipulating data maps, a decision support system to facilitate data driven farm design, access to an open data repository, and enterprise class analytics,” he said.
Oluwatosin who also revealed that the project was supervised by Mrs Joseph Adekunle, from the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, said thr farm factory help in optimizing input using sensors to automation/intelligent monitoring and data collection system.
“Information on precision agriculture in Africa and Nigeria in particular is scare. Therefore the researches into the use of modern facilities in food production in western Nigeria become imperative.”
He said farm factory is superior to conventional methods of farming because it is a smart climatic control system with a low cost sensors for tropical conditions and it is a remote monitoring and auto- save data to the cloud server for further analysis.
He added other benefits such as: “Artificial growing environment to enhance the natural growing condition of the produce. Minimizing the use of land scape and optimizing yield and is made in Nigeria product.
It is a five voltage powered smart farmer computer and has the ability to optimize operations such as watering, cooling, light intensity, spraying, and seed spacing. Full automation and 24/7 possible operation and is scalable from a backyard system to an industrial operation.
“ It allows for the democratization and decentralization of food production. Farm- Factory can be used as a training kit for educational purposes both in tertiary institution or research institute. It also has taken farming from the use of raw tools to using smart system which is effortless and allow us to focus on other activities out-side farming,” he pointed.
Oluwatosin stated further that his vision is to create an open and accessible technology aiding everyone to grow food in their home round the year and to grow food for everyone.
“My mission is to create new generation of smart farmer using smart solutions made in Nigeria to increase food production and Agriculture Education in Nigeria. And I expects that in the next four years, Farm-Factory will be installed in every home (urban city) in Nigeria to grow their vegetables while institutions are using it to teach student about precision agriculture,” he said.

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