Project Name: The People’s Network use in Digital Agriculture
Elevator Pitch:
Large and small growers alike benefit from sharing ambient weather conditions, air quality, and other environmental data. We propose encouraging cooperation and data sharing across large and small agricultural operations by providing hardware manufacturers, growers, researchers and governmental entities with the ability to develop, test and deploy their sensors through Helium, dashboard their hardware/services through M3’s platform, and share data that can help give each entity a fuller picture of growing conditions.
M3 combines Drones as a Service with Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and AI to reduce chemical use by upwards of 90% in specialty crops such as apples, almonds, pears and pistachios. M3 has a strong track record of developing and commercializing AgTech, operates thousands of drone operations annually and develops novel cyber-physical systems for IoT deployments in agriculture. M3’s technologies not only reduce chemical inputs, but also organically increase sustainability in some of agriculture’s most chemically intensive systems. M3 has received over $1 million in research funds related to UAS and IoT from some of the largest fruit producers in Washington, the Almond Board of California, California Pistachio Research Board and the California Department of Food and Agriculture, in addition to the USDA and United Nations joint Food and Agriculture Organization / International Atomic Energy Agency.
Nathan Moses-Gonzales (CEO)
Nathan Moses-Gonzales is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of M3 Agriculture Technologies. Nathan’s two primary research interests include the research and development of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and the development of Internet of Things (IoT) for Agriculture. Nathan serves as a consultant for The United States Department of Agriculture and the United Nations on topics related to Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Cyber-Physical systems. Nathan travels extensively internationally on expert missions through the United Nations and is seen as a leader in AgTech throughout the United Nations Member States network. Nathan is a subject editor for technology with the Entomological Society of America, where he recently edited a journal on the use of Drones in entomology (https://academic.oup.com/jee/pages/drones-to-improve-insect-pest-management). Nathan works with Industry, Governmental and Academic partners to facilitate the development and commercialization of AgTech in specialty cropping systems.
Michael Milam (CTO)
Michael Milam is a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of M3 Agriculture Technologies. Prior to founding M3, Michael served in the United States Air Force, where he worked in signals intelligence. Michael served two tours of duties in Afghanistan working on remote communications and sensor packages for deployment on small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
Robert Hogg (Helium SME)
Robert Hogg consults with M3 Agriculture Technologies on Helium, networking and IoT related initiatives. As a Helium early adopter and Patron he is deeply engaged with/aware of Helium-related issues historically, currently, as well as proposals and possibilities for future applications and evolution.
Project Details:
Background
Specialty Crops
Specialty crops are rapidly consolidating into large operations, leading to the destruction of small and medium sized growers. Without technologies, such as Helium, specialty crops will consolidate into fewer, large operations around closed source platforms that only large operations can afford. Helium disrupts industry consolidation by enabling grower to grower coordination at all scales of production. Coordination through Helium will allow growing communities of all sizes to share the benefits of economies of scale through open sourced networks that allow for the proliferation of digital tools and services. Without Helium, industry consolidation will lead to increased competitive advantages for large scale operations over the next five years (Cascadia Capital, 2020). Institutional investment and industry consolidation in agriculture will focus on yield increasing technologies which may be inaccessible to small scale growers, but highly valuable to large scale operations who are able to leverage economies of scale.
The decentralization of rural communications alongside the development of open source hardware to empower grassroots digitization efforts will be a boon for rural growing communities. The USDA notes, “enhancing digital agriculture technologies… could create at least $47 billion each year in additional gross benefit for the U.S. economy.” (USDA, 2022) Here, growers and agri-businesses will increasingly rely on data-driven, technological approaches to reduce operational costs and increase profits. Key areas for optimizing specialty cropping systems include the development of technologies and facilities that increase yield and productivity as well as increasing reliance on technological approaches to create data-driven enterprises. The decentralized nature of helium, combined with low cost sensors and agricultural/meteorological models may enable growers of all sizes to adopt digital practices into existing workflows.
Impact to Grower’s Bottomline
M3 Agriculture Technologies specializes in Economic Entomology with an emphasis in the sub-discipline of Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM seeks to reduce the environmental impact of agricultural production by providing solutions focusing on Plant-Insect Ecosystems (P-IE). M3 leverages sensor data with models and algorithms to predict key events within P-IE, such as insect egg laying and egg hatch, in addition to forecasting plant health issues, such as blight and stress.
M3’s data driven approach to IPM helps growers reduce their cost and improve their bottom line by providing microclimate decision support. Growers rely on a diversity of models, including Degree Day Accumulation (DDA) to support various management decisions within the IPM framework. Whereas current decision support tools rely on low density, geographically disparate weather stations to drive decision support, M3 focuses on microclimate data to support increased precision of DDA models. While there are numerous uses for DDA, decision support for codling moth (cydia pomonella), a highly destructive pest presents a clear example of how increased sensor data can help growers reduce costs.
Decision support methods based on a calendar date often result in poor insect control and a waste of resources. Insect activity varies from year to year depending on weather and therefore DDA is key to improving management and reducing costs. Washington State University found orchards that adhered to DDA models for critical early season decision support reduced their losses from codling moth damage by upwards of 50%. Table 1 details a range of costs related to damage caused by codling moth in Logan, UT when using calendar based decision support versus DDA. DDA is one of many of decision support models M3 plans on deploying through the Helium Network.
Table 1: Calendar versus DDA decision support loss/acre.
DDA response date | Days off by Calendar (May 1) Spray | Economic loss/acre (USD)
-- | -- | --
May 15, 2005 | 14 | ~ $250
May 5, 2006 | 4 | ~$125
April 30 2007 | -1 | ~ $50
Economic impact of codling moth management in Logan, UT based on fixed calendar date versus Degree Day Accumulation
Objectives
M3 anticipates establishing a Helium network for hardware and service providers to “hang” their sensors upon. M3 works with commercial partners to develop a process to onboard sensors through Helium. Once onboarded, sensors will be accessible through M3’s Digital Harvest platform. While affordable hardware solutions exist within the agricultural community of practice, tool makers lack the technical acumen to create requisite cyber-physical infrastructure to support their deployments. The abundance of homegrown solutions has been stymied by the dearth of network coverage resulting in many startups failing to gain traction in the agricultural industries they support. M3 intends to break this chicken and egg cycle by providing hardware manufactures, growers, researchers and governmental entities with the ability to develop, test and deploy their sensors through Helium, and dashboard their hardware/services through M3’s platform.
Telecommunications companies classically conflate data use with population density. This ethos leads to a lack of network coverage in growing regions where population density is low. As a result, many rural communities and growing regions lack the requisite connectivity to create digital services. Unlike telecommunications companies, M3 does not conflate data use with population density. M3 believes agriculture will be among the most data intensive sectors on the planet once digital tools and services proliferate throughout growing regions. Whereas urban areas are organically populating hotspots, M3 deployments will focus specifically on large geographic regions throughout rural agricultural regions throughout the western US. These rural deployments will kickoff digital agriculture by providing a network to establish digital services in rural growing communities.
During 2021, M3 established a test site in central Washington (Fig. 3). This site featured 30 Helium hotspots and 98 sensors. Over the course of six months, M3’s test site absorbed over 2 million data points, drawing the attention of T-Mobile - our current backhaul provider. According to DeWi ETL (https://etl.dewi.org/), at one point during the summer of 2021, M3’s remote field site in Washington State was in the top 100 of DC surrounded by cities like Fuzhou (a city of 40 million) and ahead of Seattle, WA.
Expansion with DeWi
While M3 currently services one large grower with Internet of Things (IoT), we service 100 unique locations throughout the state of Washington. This grant will allow M3 to deploy Helium hotspots, weather stations, temperature/relative humidity sensors, soil moisture sensors and asset tracking via GPS to five small and medium sized growers. This demonstration of decentralized networks will help growers understand the power of IoT technologies and will help M3 provide greater coverage for the Helium network. Furthermore, expanding this footprint will enable other small businesses to add their services to the network and support the proliferation of low cost sensors and data driven services.
Beyond servicing commercial growers, we plan on working with universities, governments, industry boards and other agribusinesses to champion an open source ecosystem anchored by The Helium Network. M3 has data sharing partnerships with several universities, including Arizona State University, University of California, Washington State University and Oregon State University, in addition to Multinational, Federal, State and Local governments, nonprofit industry boards and other agribusinesses. Working with a broad set of stakeholders ensures that these tools not only benefit industry through increased grower to grower coordination, but also improve models through university partnerships, scalability through governmental partnerships, forecasting through industry boards and innovation through agribusinesses.
Vision
Autonomous systems are transforming the way we identify, manage, and respond to risk. Combining the Internet of Things (IoT) with our cloud platform enables decision makers to respond rapidly to plant health emergencies. Developing novel approaches utilizing machine learning opens the door for new opportunities to optimize decision support whether in the field, on the go or in the air. Cybernetics tools designed to amplify expert knowledge are increasing the diversity and quality of sensed information, improving overall outcomes related to plant health emergencies and Integrated Pest Management.
Application
AgIoT is a Farm Management web app that combines the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and Machine Learning. AgIoT provides growers with intelligent tools to monitor and manage their fields from anywhere. AgIoT helps our customers remain agile while maximizing resource allocation. AgIoT provides:
Machine Learning for persistent monitoring.
Field level weather forecasts.
Fully automatic farm and orchard management achieved through website or smart phone app.
Outcome
By leveraging novel architectures for data-acquisition with cloud computing and machine learning, M3’s IoT:
Reduces cost to monitor orchards.
Increases the precision of farm critical operations, such as sprays and treatments.
Provides field data accessible from anywhere in the world.
Analyzes historical data in order to identify trends and detect anomalies.
M3’s IoT can be deployed in a diversity of specialty crop systems, which comprise approximately 20 million acres of production in the United States.
Deployment Deliverables
M3 will deploy 15-30 Helium hotspots (Fig. 1 &2) in Central California with a large governmental partner. This network will support data driven coordination by anonymizing data to ensure privacy. Anonymized data will be shared with researchers that support basic and applied research through universities and extension agricultural services.
The Hotspot network will provide communications for LoRaWAN sensors, including Temperature and Relative Humidity (Fig. 4 left), Soil Moisture, Air Quality and GPS (Fig. 5 top). As a part of this grant, M3 will develop and dashboard visualizations using Cognitive Systems Engineering approaches. This combination of sensors provides the foundation for decision support and model development. These models include irrigation monitoring, drought mitigation, frost detection, degree day accumulation and air quality. These services will help growers improve their growing practices by reducing the amount of water used for irrigation, improving control practices by providing microclimate data for plant phenology and insect ecology, and help reduce particulate matter pollution by indexing air quality.
In addition to the sensors M3 will onboard, we will work with other businesses that develop hardware but lack networking, backend and frontend experience. These hardware include smart traps with onboarded machine learning insect models developed by M3 in addition to a pheromone emitter for insect pest management.
Finally, M3 will work with Helium bloggers to ensure the results of this effort are captured and communicated to the Helium Community. M3 will also work with publications, such as Good Fruit Grower and scientific societies, such as the American Entomological Society of America and attend industry/academic conferences to detail how Helium enables researchers and growers to accomplish more with less.
Our goal is to leverage the Helium network and create a marketplace that enables developers to dashboard their sensors through our platform. M3 incentivizes our platform by providing growers, consultants and researchers with the ability to onboard models and receive royalties on a per acre basis. On the hardware side, producers can develop hardware and expand their footprint as Helium fills out in growingcommunities. We believe this approach will create a virtuous cycle, encouraging developers to not only develop nascent models integrating diverse sensors, but also to iterate and improve models based on per acre adoption and royalties. As helium hotspots expand within growing regions, developers and users will create new hardware/software combinations that further expand the use cases and data use on Helium LoRaWAN networks.
Sensors of interest include but are not limited to:
Temperature and Relative Humidity
Soil Moisture
Particulate matter (pm 10 & pm 2.5)
GPS
Roadmap:
Milestone | Deliverable | Summary | Cost (USD)
-- | -- | -- | --
Deploy 100 Temperature and Relative Humidity Sensors | Dashboard sensors and port to Helium | Sensors will be onboarded to the Helium Network, geo-located and installed in the field. Field telemetry will be translated to our cloud platform for dashboarding of information and visualization designed by cognitive systems engineers with domain experience in agriculture. M3 developers will work with growers to develop visualizations that make sense to growing communities and create pathways for growers to onboard sensors through the Helium Network and M3’s platform. | Unit Sensor cost: $53.75Total Sensor cost :$5,375Front End/Cognitive System Engineer Dev: 125 hours @ $149 = $18,625Total: $24,000
Deploy 10 Soil Moisture Sensors | Dashboard sensors and port to Helium | See summary of milestone 1 | Unit Sensor cost: $147.50Total Sensor cost: $1,475Front End/CSE Dev: 225 hours @ $149 = $33,525Total: $35,000
Deploy 10 weather stations including, wind speed/ direction, rainfall, solar radiation | Dashboard sensors and port to Helium | See summary of milestone 1 | Unit Sensor cost: $594.50Total Sensor cost: $5,945Front End/CSE Dev: 195 hours @ $149 = $29,055Total: $35,000
10 GPS sensors | Dashboard sensors and port to Helium | See summary of milestone 1 | Front End/CSE Dev: 85 hours @ $149 = $12,665Total: $15,080
Content Creation | Blogs, stakeholder communication and public outreach | M3 has a strong track record with coordinating public outreach, especially in growing communities. M3 will work with Helium to create content in order to keep the Helium community up to date and connect with agricultural industry journalists to bring these types of deployments to the forefront of AgTech coverage. Examples of M3 past technology deployments have been highlighted in online and print forms in multiple industry journals such as: Good Fruit Grower, and West Coast Nut. M3 has also been highlighted in various AgTech related news and content websites. We will leverage these past relationships to ensure the Helium supported IoT deployments are covered. M3 plans to attend multiple annual industry and academic conferences where we speak on or provide displays of our technology and services. M3 CEO Nathan Moses-Gonzales is slated to host a symposium in Vancouver, British Columbia on Cyber-Physical Systems. At this conference, he will discuss Helium supported networks and decision making tools.The goal will be highlight our Helium based technologies and services. | Total: $4,000
Backend maintained for 12 months (to continue indefinitely) | New users have access to freemium Helium powered Decision Support | M3 will support accounts on an annual basis through contractual agreements with growers and intends to store data for a minimum of five year for inactive accounts. University and government partners can access this data for use in publicans, grants, and other value added R&D that directly benefits growers. | System Admin/Maintainer120 hours @ $120 = $14,400
Moses-Gonzales, N., & Brewer, M. J. (2021). A Special Collection: Drones to Improve Insect Pest Management. Journal of Economic Entomology, 114(5), 1853-1856.https://doi.org/10.1093/jee/toab081
Thank you! Clarissa I wanted to notify you also that we have put this into GitHub last night, thanks!
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Project Name: The People’s Network use in Digital Agriculture
Elevator Pitch:
Large and small growers alike benefit from sharing ambient weather conditions, air quality, and other environmental data. We propose encouraging cooperation and data sharing across large and small agricultural operations by providing hardware manufacturers, growers, researchers and governmental entities with the ability to develop, test and deploy their sensors through Helium, dashboard their hardware/services through M3’s platform, and share data that can help give each entity a fuller picture of growing conditions.
Total fiat/hnt ask:
$127,000 USD
Name and Address:
Legal Name: M3 Consulting Group
Address: 530 Vermont Ave. Erie, PA 16505
Team or Project website: https://www.m3agriculture.com/services/digital-harvest/
M3 Agriculture Technologies
M3 combines Drones as a Service with Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and AI to reduce chemical use by upwards of 90% in specialty crops such as apples, almonds, pears and pistachios. M3 has a strong track record of developing and commercializing AgTech, operates thousands of drone operations annually and develops novel cyber-physical systems for IoT deployments in agriculture. M3’s technologies not only reduce chemical inputs, but also organically increase sustainability in some of agriculture’s most chemically intensive systems. M3 has received over $1 million in research funds related to UAS and IoT from some of the largest fruit producers in Washington, the Almond Board of California, California Pistachio Research Board and the California Department of Food and Agriculture, in addition to the USDA and United Nations joint Food and Agriculture Organization / International Atomic Energy Agency.
Nathan Moses-Gonzales (CEO)
Nathan Moses-Gonzales is a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of M3 Agriculture Technologies. Nathan’s two primary research interests include the research and development of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and the development of Internet of Things (IoT) for Agriculture. Nathan serves as a consultant for The United States Department of Agriculture and the United Nations on topics related to Unmanned Aircraft Systems and Cyber-Physical systems. Nathan travels extensively internationally on expert missions through the United Nations and is seen as a leader in AgTech throughout the United Nations Member States network. Nathan is a subject editor for technology with the Entomological Society of America, where he recently edited a journal on the use of Drones in entomology (https://academic.oup.com/jee/pages/drones-to-improve-insect-pest-management). Nathan works with Industry, Governmental and Academic partners to facilitate the development and commercialization of AgTech in specialty cropping systems.
Michael Milam (CTO)
Michael Milam is a co-founder and the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of M3 Agriculture Technologies. Prior to founding M3, Michael served in the United States Air Force, where he worked in signals intelligence. Michael served two tours of duties in Afghanistan working on remote communications and sensor packages for deployment on small Unmanned Aircraft Systems.
Robert Hogg (Helium SME)
Robert Hogg consults with M3 Agriculture Technologies on Helium, networking and IoT related initiatives. As a Helium early adopter and Patron he is deeply engaged with/aware of Helium-related issues historically, currently, as well as proposals and possibilities for future applications and evolution.
Project Details:
Background
Specialty Crops
Specialty crops are rapidly consolidating into large operations, leading to the destruction of small and medium sized growers. Without technologies, such as Helium, specialty crops will consolidate into fewer, large operations around closed source platforms that only large operations can afford. Helium disrupts industry consolidation by enabling grower to grower coordination at all scales of production. Coordination through Helium will allow growing communities of all sizes to share the benefits of economies of scale through open sourced networks that allow for the proliferation of digital tools and services. Without Helium, industry consolidation will lead to increased competitive advantages for large scale operations over the next five years (Cascadia Capital, 2020). Institutional investment and industry consolidation in agriculture will focus on yield increasing technologies which may be inaccessible to small scale growers, but highly valuable to large scale operations who are able to leverage economies of scale.
The decentralization of rural communications alongside the development of open source hardware to empower grassroots digitization efforts will be a boon for rural growing communities. The USDA notes, “enhancing digital agriculture technologies… could create at least $47 billion each year in additional gross benefit for the U.S. economy.” (USDA, 2022) Here, growers and agri-businesses will increasingly rely on data-driven, technological approaches to reduce operational costs and increase profits. Key areas for optimizing specialty cropping systems include the development of technologies and facilities that increase yield and productivity as well as increasing reliance on technological approaches to create data-driven enterprises. The decentralized nature of helium, combined with low cost sensors and agricultural/meteorological models may enable growers of all sizes to adopt digital practices into existing workflows.
Impact to Grower’s Bottomline
M3 Agriculture Technologies specializes in Economic Entomology with an emphasis in the sub-discipline of Integrated Pest Management (IPM). IPM seeks to reduce the environmental impact of agricultural production by providing solutions focusing on Plant-Insect Ecosystems (P-IE). M3 leverages sensor data with models and algorithms to predict key events within P-IE, such as insect egg laying and egg hatch, in addition to forecasting plant health issues, such as blight and stress.
M3’s data driven approach to IPM helps growers reduce their cost and improve their bottom line by providing microclimate decision support. Growers rely on a diversity of models, including Degree Day Accumulation (DDA) to support various management decisions within the IPM framework. Whereas current decision support tools rely on low density, geographically disparate weather stations to drive decision support, M3 focuses on microclimate data to support increased precision of DDA models. While there are numerous uses for DDA, decision support for codling moth (cydia pomonella), a highly destructive pest presents a clear example of how increased sensor data can help growers reduce costs.
Decision support methods based on a calendar date often result in poor insect control and a waste of resources. Insect activity varies from year to year depending on weather and therefore DDA is key to improving management and reducing costs. Washington State University found orchards that adhered to DDA models for critical early season decision support reduced their losses from codling moth damage by upwards of 50%. Table 1 details a range of costs related to damage caused by codling moth in Logan, UT when using calendar based decision support versus DDA. DDA is one of many of decision support models M3 plans on deploying through the Helium Network.
DDA response date | Days off by Calendar (May 1) Spray | Economic loss/acre (USD)
-- | -- | --
May 15, 2005 | 14 | ~ $250
May 5, 2006 | 4 | ~$125
April 30 2007 | -1 | ~ $50
Table 1: Calendar versus DDA decision support loss/acre.
Economic impact of codling moth management in Logan, UT based on fixed calendar date versus Degree Day Accumulation
Objectives
M3 anticipates establishing a Helium network for hardware and service providers to “hang” their sensors upon. M3 works with commercial partners to develop a process to onboard sensors through Helium. Once onboarded, sensors will be accessible through M3’s Digital Harvest platform. While affordable hardware solutions exist within the agricultural community of practice, tool makers lack the technical acumen to create requisite cyber-physical infrastructure to support their deployments. The abundance of homegrown solutions has been stymied by the dearth of network coverage resulting in many startups failing to gain traction in the agricultural industries they support. M3 intends to break this chicken and egg cycle by providing hardware manufactures, growers, researchers and governmental entities with the ability to develop, test and deploy their sensors through Helium, and dashboard their hardware/services through M3’s platform.
Telecommunications companies classically conflate data use with population density. This ethos leads to a lack of network coverage in growing regions where population density is low. As a result, many rural communities and growing regions lack the requisite connectivity to create digital services. Unlike telecommunications companies, M3 does not conflate data use with population density. M3 believes agriculture will be among the most data intensive sectors on the planet once digital tools and services proliferate throughout growing regions. Whereas urban areas are organically populating hotspots, M3 deployments will focus specifically on large geographic regions throughout rural agricultural regions throughout the western US. These rural deployments will kickoff digital agriculture by providing a network to establish digital services in rural growing communities.
During 2021, M3 established a test site in central Washington (Fig. 3). This site featured 30 Helium hotspots and 98 sensors. Over the course of six months, M3’s test site absorbed over 2 million data points, drawing the attention of T-Mobile - our current backhaul provider. According to DeWi ETL (https://etl.dewi.org/), at one point during the summer of 2021, M3’s remote field site in Washington State was in the top 100 of DC surrounded by cities like Fuzhou (a city of 40 million) and ahead of Seattle, WA.
Expansion with DeWi
While M3 currently services one large grower with Internet of Things (IoT), we service 100 unique locations throughout the state of Washington. This grant will allow M3 to deploy Helium hotspots, weather stations, temperature/relative humidity sensors, soil moisture sensors and asset tracking via GPS to five small and medium sized growers. This demonstration of decentralized networks will help growers understand the power of IoT technologies and will help M3 provide greater coverage for the Helium network. Furthermore, expanding this footprint will enable other small businesses to add their services to the network and support the proliferation of low cost sensors and data driven services.
Beyond servicing commercial growers, we plan on working with universities, governments, industry boards and other agribusinesses to champion an open source ecosystem anchored by The Helium Network. M3 has data sharing partnerships with several universities, including Arizona State University, University of California, Washington State University and Oregon State University, in addition to Multinational, Federal, State and Local governments, nonprofit industry boards and other agribusinesses. Working with a broad set of stakeholders ensures that these tools not only benefit industry through increased grower to grower coordination, but also improve models through university partnerships, scalability through governmental partnerships, forecasting through industry boards and innovation through agribusinesses.
Vision
Autonomous systems are transforming the way we identify, manage, and respond to risk. Combining the Internet of Things (IoT) with our cloud platform enables decision makers to respond rapidly to plant health emergencies. Developing novel approaches utilizing machine learning opens the door for new opportunities to optimize decision support whether in the field, on the go or in the air. Cybernetics tools designed to amplify expert knowledge are increasing the diversity and quality of sensed information, improving overall outcomes related to plant health emergencies and Integrated Pest Management.
Application
AgIoT is a Farm Management web app that combines the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing and Machine Learning. AgIoT provides growers with intelligent tools to monitor and manage their fields from anywhere. AgIoT helps our customers remain agile while maximizing resource allocation. AgIoT provides:
Outcome
By leveraging novel architectures for data-acquisition with cloud computing and machine learning, M3’s IoT:
M3’s IoT can be deployed in a diversity of specialty crop systems, which comprise approximately 20 million acres of production in the United States.
Deployment Deliverables
M3 will deploy 15-30 Helium hotspots (Fig. 1 &2) in Central California with a large governmental partner. This network will support data driven coordination by anonymizing data to ensure privacy. Anonymized data will be shared with researchers that support basic and applied research through universities and extension agricultural services.
The Hotspot network will provide communications for LoRaWAN sensors, including Temperature and Relative Humidity (Fig. 4 left), Soil Moisture, Air Quality and GPS (Fig. 5 top). As a part of this grant, M3 will develop and dashboard visualizations using Cognitive Systems Engineering approaches. This combination of sensors provides the foundation for decision support and model development. These models include irrigation monitoring, drought mitigation, frost detection, degree day accumulation and air quality. These services will help growers improve their growing practices by reducing the amount of water used for irrigation, improving control practices by providing microclimate data for plant phenology and insect ecology, and help reduce particulate matter pollution by indexing air quality.
In addition to the sensors M3 will onboard, we will work with other businesses that develop hardware but lack networking, backend and frontend experience. These hardware include smart traps with onboarded machine learning insect models developed by M3 in addition to a pheromone emitter for insect pest management.
Finally, M3 will work with Helium bloggers to ensure the results of this effort are captured and communicated to the Helium Community. M3 will also work with publications, such as Good Fruit Grower and scientific societies, such as the American Entomological Society of America and attend industry/academic conferences to detail how Helium enables researchers and growers to accomplish more with less.
Our goal is to leverage the Helium network and create a marketplace that enables developers to dashboard their sensors through our platform. M3 incentivizes our platform by providing growers, consultants and researchers with the ability to onboard models and receive royalties on a per acre basis. On the hardware side, producers can develop hardware and expand their footprint as Helium fills out in growing communities. We believe this approach will create a virtuous cycle, encouraging developers to not only develop nascent models integrating diverse sensors, but also to iterate and improve models based on per acre adoption and royalties. As helium hotspots expand within growing regions, developers and users will create new hardware/software combinations that further expand the use cases and data use on Helium LoRaWAN networks.
Sensors of interest include but are not limited to:
Roadmap:
Milestone | Deliverable | Summary | Cost (USD) -- | -- | -- | -- Deploy 100 Temperature and Relative Humidity Sensors | Dashboard sensors and port to Helium | Sensors will be onboarded to the Helium Network, geo-located and installed in the field. Field telemetry will be translated to our cloud platform for dashboarding of information and visualization designed by cognitive systems engineers with domain experience in agriculture. M3 developers will work with growers to develop visualizations that make sense to growing communities and create pathways for growers to onboard sensors through the Helium Network and M3’s platform. | Unit Sensor cost: $53.75Total Sensor cost :$5,375Front End/Cognitive System Engineer Dev: 125 hours @ $149 = $18,625Total: $24,000 Deploy 10 Soil Moisture Sensors | Dashboard sensors and port to Helium | See summary of milestone 1 | Unit Sensor cost: $147.50Total Sensor cost: $1,475Front End/CSE Dev: 225 hours @ $149 = $33,525Total: $35,000 Deploy 10 weather stations including, wind speed/ direction, rainfall, solar radiation | Dashboard sensors and port to Helium | See summary of milestone 1 | Unit Sensor cost: $594.50Total Sensor cost: $5,945Front End/CSE Dev: 195 hours @ $149 = $29,055Total: $35,000 10 GPS sensors | Dashboard sensors and port to Helium | See summary of milestone 1 | Front End/CSE Dev: 85 hours @ $149 = $12,665Total: $15,080 Content Creation | Blogs, stakeholder communication and public outreach | M3 has a strong track record with coordinating public outreach, especially in growing communities. M3 will work with Helium to create content in order to keep the Helium community up to date and connect with agricultural industry journalists to bring these types of deployments to the forefront of AgTech coverage. Examples of M3 past technology deployments have been highlighted in online and print forms in multiple industry journals such as: Good Fruit Grower, and West Coast Nut. M3 has also been highlighted in various AgTech related news and content websites. We will leverage these past relationships to ensure the Helium supported IoT deployments are covered. M3 plans to attend multiple annual industry and academic conferences where we speak on or provide displays of our technology and services. M3 CEO Nathan Moses-Gonzales is slated to host a symposium in Vancouver, British Columbia on Cyber-Physical Systems. At this conference, he will discuss Helium supported networks and decision making tools.The goal will be highlight our Helium based technologies and services. | Total: $4,000 Backend maintained for 12 months (to continue indefinitely) | New users have access to freemium Helium powered Decision Support | M3 will support accounts on an annual basis through contractual agreements with growers and intends to store data for a minimum of five year for inactive accounts. University and government partners can access this data for use in publicans, grants, and other value added R&D that directly benefits growers. | System Admin/Maintainer120 hours @ $120 = $14,400Works Cited
Cascadia Capital LLC. (2020). Washington Tree Fruit Industry: Mid-Year Update 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2022, http://www.cascadiacapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/WA-Tree-Fruit-Industry-Trends-Analysis-2020_Mid-Year-Update.pdf
Cistulli, V., Lai, K.C. (2005). Decentralized Development in Agriculture. An Overview. EASYPol Series 012. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://www.fao.org/policy-support/tools-and-publications/resources-details/en/c/446077/
Ekins, P., Zenghelis, D. (2021). The costs and benefits of environmental sustainability.Sustain Sci 16, 949–965 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-021-00910-5
FAO. (2009). Global agriculture towards 2050: High-level Expert Forum on how to feed the world in 2050, 12-13 Oct 2009. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved February 21, 2022, from https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/wsfs/docs/Issues_papers/HLEF2050_Global_Agriculture.pdf
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Thank you for submitting this grant proposal we are very much looking forward to reviewing your proposal with our team.🎈
Thank you! Clarissa I wanted to notify you also that we have put this into GitHub last night, thanks!
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