Decision Support in

Agriculture: Bridging the Gap

Big Data Innovation Summit Boston
Erik Andrejko: VP, Science
erik@climate.com
 OUR GOAL
To help farmers increase sustainability
& productivity through data science
How Our Tools Benefit Farmers

DECI SI ON M AKI NG BASED RESPOND QUI CKLY ANTI CI PATE

ON WEATHER, SOI L, CROPS TO WEATHER/FI ELD YI ELD-REDUCI NG
& EQUI PM ENT CONDI TI ONS AGRONOM I C I SSUES
Our Approach

measurements models execution

Climate Corporation Scale

75M + 5M
Acres enrolled on the Acres enrolled in ClimatePro
Climate Platform premium offering
Outline

The Agricultural Opportunities Challenges

Context
The Digital
Agricultural Context
Digitization: Storage and Compute Costs
Exponential Decrease in Storage and Computing Costs

$100,000.00

$10,000.00
COST PER GB

$1,000.00

$100.00

$10.00

$1.00

$0.10
1980 1990 2000 2010

Source: http://www.statisticbrain.com/, The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution

Digitization: Storage and Compute Costs
Exponential Decrease in Storage and Computing Costs

ENIAC
$100Tr
2010 DOLLARS (LOG SCALE)

IBM 7090
$1Tr UNIVAC I
$10B Commodore 64
$100M Altair
8800 Gateway
$1M Mac II G6-200
$10K iPad 2

$100
$1
1950 1970 1990 2010

Source: http://www.statisticbrain.com/, The Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution

Digitization: Connected Customers
Mobile penetration and growth in last 3 years

Europe:
100% (-)2

Percentage points
(Growth Mar 2010Dec 2013)
USA, Canada: 0
100% (7 pp)
0-5
5-10

Asia: 87% 10-20

(+29 pp) 20-30
30-50
>50

Americas1: Africa: 71%

100% (12 pp) (+26 pp)

1 Excluding USA and Canada

2 For regions with over 100% penetration (average of more than one mobile device per capita), growth is taken as zero

Source: IDC & Ericsson Mobility, World Cellular Information Service

Digitization: Ubiquitous Sensors
Increasing internet of things drives data acceleration of data generation

35B
30B
30B Units

25B

100B
20B

20B

10B Sensors installed

15B
Units over next 4 years
10B

5B

0
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

Source: Semico Research, 2013

 60% by 2015
Agriculture product shortfall in maize, rice, wheat and soybeans

Source: FAO
Data Science
M eets Agriculture
Opportunities
The Next Revolution?

Green Revolution Biotech Revolution Digital Ag Revolution

INTENSIFY BIOTECH OPTIMIZE

Apply breeding, fertilization Marker assisted selection, traits, Apply data science to optimize
to increase yields. chemistries, microbials. management.
Source: The Country
Gentleman,
 9.4 : 1
Ratio of percentage of population engaged in farming in 1940
to 1990

Source: USDA
 2003
Widespread Adoption of Self
Driving Tractor
Data Available
One Crop, One Season, One Geography

Field Data Remote Sensing Data Weather Data

14B Observations 260B Observations 20B Observations

Yield Modeling
Yield Optimization

0.025
Optimized Yield

0.020 Yield optimized for

environment by optimization
of genetics and management
0.015
DENSITY

using predictive model.

0.010

Yield
0.005

Yield today.
0.000
100 125 150 175 200

YIELD
Data Science Applied: Corn Yields

172 bu/ac 503 bu/ac

US National Corn Yield in World Record Corn Yield in
2014 2014 (Randy Dowdy)

Source: USDA
Nutrient Management: Nitrogen
Significant Opportunity - Nitrogen Fertilizer in Corn for US Corn Production

$2.5B $2B
Approximate total expenditure Approximate total expenditure on nitrogen
on nitrogen for corn within US for corn within US market each growing
market each growing season. season under 20% efficiency improvement.
Nutrient Management: Nitrogen
Significant Opportunity - Nitrogen Fertilizer in Corn for US Corn Production

$48B $49B
Approximate US total corn production each
Approximate US total corn
growing season under 3% yield
production each growing season.
improvement.

Assumes commodity price of $4 / bushel and 3%

increase
Opportunity

Technology I mpact

Opportunity
Challenges in Applying
Data Science
Challenges in Data and Learning from Data

Data Challenges Learning Challenges

Spatio-Temporal Latent Features

Data Curse of
Sparse Data Dimensionality
Missing Data Multi-task Learning
Noisy Data
Challenges in Inherent Complexity

Genetics, Environment, Practices

Crop Processes

Soil & Nutrient Processes

M achine Learning
Overcoming the Challenge: Data Challenges

Bayesian Spatiotemporal Statistics

Structural representation of stochastic generative process

Overcoming the Challenge: Curse of Dimensionality

Deep Neural Network Hierarchical Dimensionality Reduction

Yield Yield

Soil Processes

PHYSI CAL LAYERS

HI DDEN LAYERS

Nutrient Processes

Crop Processes

Genetics, Environment & Practices Yield

Overcoming the Challenge: Multi Task Learning

Deep Neural Network

Y W
HI DDEN LAYERS

Latent features shared across tasks,

M ulti-task informs latent features

Genetics, Environment & Practices

The Next Revolution?

Green Revolution Biotech Revolution Digital Ag Revolution

INTENSIFY BIOTECH OPTIMIZE

Apply breeding, fertilization Marker assisted selection, traits, Apply data science to optimize
to increase yields. chemistries, microbials. management.
QUESTI ONS?
erik@climate.com