Warnings about weather breakdowns, pests and hazards in the field, quick contact with an agricultural advisor and advice on when and how much to apply plant protection products – these are just some of the advantages of the “Virtual Farm” e-service, which will be available within the eDWIN advisory platform.
“Virtual farm” is the most important e-service which has been created within the eDWIN advisory platform. It will serve farmers as a tool helping them to manage their farms. What is important, the service will be available both as a mobile application and in a web browser version.
How will the “Virtual Farm” help?
Each crop entered into the “Virtual Farm” system will be monitored. Therefore, if there is a threat of destruction of a crop by a disease or a pest, the system will inform about it.
Moreover, one of the functions of the “Virtual Farm” will be to support farmers’ decisions as to whether, when and in what amount to apply crop protection products. In this way, the service will contribute to reducing environmental and food pollution from over-applied disease and pest control products.
Furthermore, the “Virtual Farm” will facilitate contact between farmers and their agricultural advisors. The e-service will easily provide farmers with the possibility to ask the advisor a question or make a request for verification of observed risks. Each user will have an advisor assigned to their account. The nearest advisor will be automatically added, but the farmer will be able to make a change e.g. to the advisor with whom he maintains contact most frequently.
The “Virtual Farm” will also provide farmers with agro-meteorological reports. They will be prepared by voivodeship agricultural advisory centres and will have a general or personalised character.
The “Virtual Farm” will also make it possible to obtain, collect and share information on the occurrence of pests in a given area. In addition, farmers will have at their disposal a virtual field card which will allow them to keep records of their work and to draw up e-plans for plant protection. It is thanks to the information contained in the field card that it will be possible to receive notifications regarding possible threats in the field.
“Virtual farm in practice
In order to fully use the possibilities of the “Virtual Farm” e-service, the farmer will have to register and select his fields in the service. After logging into his account, the farmer will have several tabs at his disposal.
The main window will show general information about the farm. If crops have been entered, a diagram of the crop structure is displayed. Not only the current meteorological data from a chosen meteorological station will be presented, but also weather alerts, warnings about the possibility of agrophages occurrence on the fields and information sent by the chosen advisor.
eDWIN advisory platform
The eDWIN advisory platform is being developed under the eDWIN project (“Internet Platform for Advising and Decision Support in Integrated Plant Protection”). Work on the platform has been underway since June 2019 and will be completed in August this year.
However, already in June, the eDWIN platform will make its debut at the National Field Days Poświętne 2022. Initially, users will have two services available: “Virtual farm” and “Meteorological data sharing”. The other two services (“Product traceability” and “Hazard reporting”) will be available at a later date.
The eDWIN platform will be available for free to everyone, both in mobile and desktop versions. As many as 19 partners are involved in its development, including all voivodeship agricultural advisory centres in Poland, Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Centre, the Agricultural Advisory Center in Brwinow and the Institute for Plant Protection – National Research Institute in Poznan. The originator of the eDWIN platform is Wielkpolska Agricultural Advisory Center eDWIN.
The work on the platform and the eDWIN project is co-financed by the European Union and are under the patronage of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development.
The project “Internet Platform for Advising and Decision Support in Integrated Plant Protection” implemented under Measure 2.1 “High availability and quality of public e-services” of Priority Axis II “E-government and open government” of the Digital Poland Operational Programme 2014-2020. The project funding agreement was signed with the Digital Poland Projects Centre on 19 June 2019. The total value of the project is PLN 20,920,508.02, of which PLN 17,689,792.53 from European funds, with the rest coming from the state budget.
