This documentation directly needs to fit for cross-compliance procedures with public authorities and personal calculations of the farm which requires a standardized format.Furthermore, the billing of tasks shall be processed simultaneously for contractors.To enable task or route planning for the MR or contractor a RRN is required which allows communication to the farmers also without internet.A digitally managed farm becomes resilient if it is characterized by utter independence of external internet connection and power supply.Like this, the FDFS is able “to prevent disasters and crises as well as to anticipate, absorb, accommodate or recover from them in a timely, efficient and sustainable manner”.Nonetheless, all online features and functions are used comprehensively in normal conditions but are replaceable by farm particular systems in case of intermitted power and internet connection.Consequently, a hybrid system was developed, combining cloud-based systems and farm-specific solutions.Likewise, it is for power supply, backed up by an emergency power generator, which is already mandatory for livestock farming.By its installation on the farm, it ensures the decentrality of the data repository.Storing data redundantly on different servers is the main aspect of configuring an FDFS in a resilient manner.Moreover, decentrality results in a higher level of data safety by securing data against external access and loss.All necessary data for the applied precision farming solutions are available in any circumstance.To ensure the connection of sensors, machinery, farm server, and farm management, during an internet outage, an LWN is installed.Less mechanized farms obtain digital farming technology through contractors or machinery rings.When a task is ordered by such latter farmer the contractor’s machinery connects to the LWN of the farm when it is in reach.Data transfer of e.g.prescription maps or documentation of tasks is then enabled.Communication between farm and contractor/machinery ring for task disposition can proceed before task execution with a minimum amount of data within an RRN of long-range like LoRaWAN.The single components of the FDFS in Fig.2 are explained in detail in the following sections.First a farm managed by an FDFS needs a power generator for a redundant power supply.
With technical hardware solutions,ebb and flow table it has to be guaranteed that in case of a power failure no voltage drop occurs.This can be achieved by bridging voltage drops with a UPS implementable for edge computing applications.Its capacities need to be selected according to the data and processing rates of digital sensors and devices running on the farm and the needed degree of resilience of the farm.Farmers have to decide which digital functionalities are fundamental for a similarly effective and sustainable maintained production without the internet thus balancing investment cost and necessary level of resilience.Fig.3 summarizes the general functions which could be covered by the farm server.The first main function of the farm server is to store relevant data for farm management.different data partitions are to mention: Basic data like field boundaries for guidance and calculations, AB-lines for controlled traffic, management zones for variable rate application, flight plans for drones, machinery settings, etc.Open Geodata, provided by public authorities, can be stored in an automated updated version or even several older versions if necessary for specific applications of farmers.Needed versions of satellite images are stored automatically corresponding to actual calculations of e.g.management zones.In level five this function can be conducted via AI, selecting and downloading the currently available satellite images according to the needs of the planned crop rotation.Depending on the cache function of each machine or sensor the server also is supposed to be used as a cache in case machinery or sensor has lost internet connection to send data to the cloud.Data sets of tasks that got interrupted by internet outages are completed in the cloud with cache data from the farm server when an internet connection is reset or over the landline.Some specific data, individual for every farm, might be needed in real-time where no delay by internet connection is acceptable.By receiving and storing these data, redundant to the proprietary cloud service, on the farm server ensures constant access to it.The format of these in real-time needed backup data on the farm server must be read- and processible for offline desktop software.Here ISOXML, JSONLD, and for some applications, Shapeles are the suggested formats.Shapefile and ISOXML are the most common in the actual applications of OEMs.
Data for later use could also be stored in manufacturer proprietary formats and be processed after reconnection to the internet in the proprietary cloud.When purchasing technology, which disadvantageously only offers proprietary formats it is favourable to see if there exists a plugin for converters like ADAPT.Generally, here a clear farm specific definition of necessary data has to be made by farmers because the duration of internet blackouts is never predictable.Among others because of a lack of interacting functionalities between different clouds.Nevertheless, some applications of predictions, machine learning, or simple AI algorithms are possible.In this case, farmers are reliant on the offline performances of their OEMs which evince a great deficit in this sector.Accordingly, secondary processing software needs to be chosen wisely.Focusing on long-term internet interruptions each farm needs to decide about which processed data in which time gap is indispensable.These diagnoses will reveal which proprietary raw data are expected to be made available by manufacturers in open and standardized formats for farmers to be able to use the data in secondary software while the usual FMIS is not available and a desktop version does not exist.Within the suggested FDFS, a desktop version of the FMIS is intended.This is a decisive contribution for maintaining effective, efficient, and sustainable crop production during any internet outage.The FMIS desktop version maintains the necessary functionalities of the specific farm needs.The ideal case of a resilient FMIS would be redundant to the online version which is closely linked to the processing efforts in the former section.Furthermore, interfaces to the LWN connect FMIS and machinery and ensure data transmission and documentation.The FMIS of the presented FDFS provides export functions of common, standardized, and open-source formats which ensures interoperability to secondary software like a GIS for example.When investing in a FMIS farmers need to consider which services their FMIS needs to fulfil in a situation when no internet connection is available.Data communication in between farm server and sensors/ machinery during internet outages is maintained by an LWN.Depending on farm size , topography, data traffic , and required latency of executed applications a corresponding network gets installed.
Farmers who depend on contractors or MRs additionally need to be able to receive and send a radio signal to communicate tasks while internet communication is not available.Otherwise, machinery rings or contractors cannot manage their orders to maintain maximum service capacity.This network does not necessarily need high bandwidth because for management purposes the contractor or machinery ring only needs basic information about the task.The range of this signal is defined by the catchment area of the contractor and MR.To establish and ease the installation of such systems only view standards with low installation costs should be taken into consideration.MRs and contractors, who work for the farmers, need to be able to connect with their machinery and sensors to the LWNs of their customers.When the executing vehicle is in reach of the LWN, the task data can be completely uploaded for task execution.When the job is completed, as-applied and further documentation data are sent to the FMIS through the farm server over the LWN.To complete the independence of the FDFS from external signals, the LWN also covers an alternative for positioning signals.That means all items on a farm, which use position data can navigate or track their position by calculating with signals of the LWN.In case the area covered by the LWN is too small for the farm extension, georeferenced marker points can be distributed on the farm area or mobile antenna stations can be set up.The main use case in the project MRdigital in Germany was in the field of slurry application by a subsidiary company of two machinery rings,flood table which acts as a contractor.A self-propelled slurry applicator is used.Via NIRS technology nutrient contents of the substrate can be measured which enables the system to conduct variable rate application using prescription maps.Such an applicator in addition to digital nutrient measurement is seldom purchased by single farmers and a fortiori, not by small and middle scaled farms.The business model to run such a machine within the organization and the management of machinery rings makes precision farming technology accessible and affordable also for small and middle scaled farms.According to the latter sections, usually, tasks and prescription maps are sent via the internet from the FMIS to the machinery ring or directly to the machine and vice versa.Farmers using an FDFS at their needed level can create and send tasks and prescription maps also during internet connectivity problems.The RRN enables the transmission of simple task data in advance.The prescription map and the as applied documentation data get transferred when the slurry applicator is in reach of the LWN of the farm.The machinery can read data from any kind of FMIS and write it back in the same format.The approach of categorizing farmers’ needs of resilience into five levels tried to meet the majority of conditions farms are exposed to.Nevertheless, many farms might prioritize another sequence of upscaling their level of resilience.For example, a farm with many sensors in the field acquiring low-volume data might prioritize the installation of an LWN before investing in a farm server.The five-level classification is supposed to give orientation for digitizing farms to prepare for crises.Technical setups are very individual and require therefore adapted solutions securing the most important digitized applications from failure.To set up an individual FDFS and choosing the right technical components might over strain the IT skills of most of the farmers, simply because it’s not their profession.Lachia et al.for example, found that the infield use of yield maps is too complex for over 50% of French farmers.
Assembling the components of an FDFS might be even more challenging.But having once set up an FDFS, the maintenance of its components, in addition, can also be expected as very demanding for farmers alone.Consulting and support from independent institutions are needed.A farm server as a central component of the FDFS covers many functionalities from storage to processing and AI to the management of access rights for third parties.This is also supposed to guarantee data ownership and control by farmers on whom has access and uses their data for which purposes.The more extensive these server functionalities get, the harder it can be for farmers to overview and control them.A lot of time might be needed for farmers to incorporate extensive server functionalities.But this should balance itself, the more functionalities the server covers, the more farmers will profit and the more time and money they might be willing to invest and vice versa.Considering that sensors and machinery have cache storage capacities to store raw data when cloud connection is lost, a large on-farm storage server might not be needed, especially if the farm is located in an area with a rather reliable internet supply.But here too, it depends on the applications farmers deploy.Areal imaging for example needs much storage capacities and sometimes low latency which makes it necessary to store and process the images on the farm server to be in time with the following application.The proposed FDFS can be a chance for small and middle scaled farmers in employing digital farming technologies.Only the investment of administrative components, like an FMIS, is sufficient and can, under certain circumstances, be built up modularly according to farmers’ needs and investment possibilities.Machinery and technology are rented or ordered from MRs and contractors.Here we meet the problem of lacking interoperability.When choosing digital components, farmers need to look out for solutions that use international standards on semantics and ontologies, in addition, to open APIs and data formats to ensure interoperability with future or external solutions.Developing such customer- or branch-specific solutions remains the responsibility of established agricultural software developers and solution providers.Solutions including proprietary data formats should be avoided.Also, the MRs and contractors need to take this into account when investing in new technologies.What is not defined in this paper is the detailed organization of data flow at the moment of an interruption of cloud connection.