What was the challenge/problem addressed?
A pheromone trap is a type of insect trap that uses pheromones to attract insects. A pheromone-impregnated lure is encased in a conventional trap.
The use of pheromone traps is one of the fundamental methods of pest forecast in orchards and vineyards. It is also required by certain agro-environmental measures and subsidy schemes of the Common Agriculture Policy that farmers operate insect traps according to a certain density of land area (for instance one trap per two hectare) and read the catch results regularly, for example, at least once a day.
Agricultural land is fragmented in many countries of the Central and South Eastern European region therefore the parcels of economic farms are usually quite dispersed, meaning it is a very resource – human, time, cost – consuming task to physically visit and read the catch results of all the separately located traps regularly, to follow the insect gradation. The economic situation of small farms is not favourable either, thus advisors need to investigate and implement technologies, which they can integrate into their services with low cost.
How did you solve the problem?
In order to remotely monitor the gradation of pests in fruit plantations, a cost effective solution was developed by farm advisors themselves, combing simple mobile device – cheap and second hand android smart phones – and open source web technology. This solution is used in East-Hungary for over 5 years, and may serve as an example that perhaps not always the most high-tech commercial approach is the best answer to certain situation and need, especially in case of small farmers.
What is innovative in your practical case?
A simple, affordable, open source, community based solution was designed and introduced to overcome the difficulties and provide farmers and their advisors with an ICT based tool, to let them follow the gradation on-time and on-line, from their web browser. The concept and prototype was developed jointly by two Hungarian advisory centres with the principle objective of providing functionalities that can actually deliver many of the advantages offered by the much pricier commercial options.
The components of the device consist of an entry level android smart phone, a plastic box with a small glass covered hole (for the camera) and a wooden like surface to accommodate the phone and disguise it in a natural looking environment to prevent possible thefts, a delta-shape sex pheromone trap with transparent plastic sheet and the pheromone itself. Because of the low value of the used components – omitting additional costs of more expensive (and visible) ones like solar cell, special sensors, camera, GPS, logger, transmitter – the insurance of the device was neither required.
The technical task of the “android trap” is to shoot one photo a day about the sticky surface of the trap and upload it to the web server via FTP connection. The IMEI number of the SIM card, the date-time, geo-location and battery level data is sent with the image, prefixed to the file name. Thanks to the optimized phone power settings, an unexpectedly long operation time could be reached without recharge, to last even for one season (30-60-180 days by normal-extended internal-external battery). Users may browse images and related data online in a user friendly web-application and download results for further analysis in MS Excel format (v2).
Because the used smart phones are usually the ones not anymore needed by the farmers (good excuse to replace them for newer models:), the real cost of the whole device is appr. 10-15€ each, which contains the trap, the plastic wooden box and if requested, the special battery replacement.
The prototype was developed with a community approach in mind so that anyone can assemble and operate it, following the published guidelines.
What are the success factors in solving the problem?
Time and cost of transport to individual traps is saved.
More regular use of trap catch data.
Pest forecast is taken more into attention during plant protection.
Better plant protection results.
Realistically keep the regulation of specific CAP measures.
Advisor can combine pest forecast data from all the different location where his/her clients use the smart trap, enabling him to deduct additional information such as the direction and dynamics of gradation, etc.
Farmers get more familiar with ICTs, appreciating more its usefulness, becoming more open to other apps as well.
Successful use of the smart trap helps building better trust with service providers, advisors in other areas too.
Lessons learned
Our solution is very well received and used by many farmers in their everyday practical work.
However, it seems not so popular with national organizations such as the chamber of agriculture or pest protection, for whom we also tried to present and recommend our ‘system’.
We believe the main reason for this that they would rather collaborate with large telecom and ICT service providers, who may have much more robust and expensive solutions.
Many commercial ICT companies now see agriculture as great opportunity for their products and services in precision agriculture and other areas, because of large quantities in data interactions, using farming 4.0 technology, sensors, m2m communication, big data, etc. (often pushing technology without useful function), however, their main interest is profit to be gained from intensive, large scale agriculture, while they are less interested in solutions for small medium scale, family farms.
On the contrary, the main target group of farm advisors are smaller farms – who cannot afford to employ admin and expert staff in their businesses – therefore farm advisory system can be the main channel and network to provide ICT based services for SME farmers. The Smart Insect Trap solution highlighted in this example was delivered that way.
Another idea that came from introducing and piloting this solution is the need for targeted sensor combinations for specific functionality in agriculture that can be one promising future direction of ICT-agri services. In an ideal situation sensors, data loggers, transmitters, power source units etc. could be flexibly and easily combined to assembly smart devices for best price/performance in special use cases in a “lego-like” fashion. Under such scenario there is no need for a phone (for example), but only use the required technical components. This approach needs a dedicated study to clarify all technical an economic aspects (as for example it may turn out that still a basic phone is still the most appropriate device for some specific function).
What role does the advisor or advisory service play with the practical case?
The lead advisor has the main role of the inventor in this practical case, based on the problem identification, need assessment and the design of the aspired solution, as described above. The advisors also manage the whole process of development, installation, monitoring and maintaining the operation of the device. The Smart Insect Trap is not sold as a stand alone product, but provided for farmer clients as part of the advisory service fee, especially related to pest forecast and plant protection. This requires farm demonstrations and trainings as well, to showcase the concept and the usability of the approach. The lead advisor collaborates with a service developer NGO, which assist in the technical details, related to IT tasks (like the setting up of the device, FTP file transfer communication, and programming the online interface for data visualisation).
Can your approach be transferred and/or adapted for other innovation challenges and regions?
Yes
Estimated transferability on a scale from 1 to 5
(where 1 is easy and 5 very difficult)
2
For sharing the experience on the good practice, please contact
Laszlo Gabor Papocsi
lpapocsi@gmail.com
Link to external information
https://www.biokutatas.hu/hu/page/show/epitsd-meg-a-sajat-okos-rovarcsapdad