Speaking at the Ankara Technology Summit, Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli stated that they started with lemon to make a yield forecast by the meteorological data, "We forecast the prices of lemon in the coming months. We are trying to develop these forecasts with more products" he said.
Minister of Agriculture and Forestry Bekir Pakdemirli participated in "Smartcon 2019 Ankara Technology Summit" held in the conference hall of Information and Communication Technologies Authority.
In his speech he said there has to be an "Agriculture 4.0" process in agriculture, such as "Industry 4.0", and it should be used technologies such as sensors, autonomous systems, "drones" and cloud computing systems to increase the yield when reached to certain sizes on the basis of scale.
Minister Pakdemirli, "Planning in agriculture is a very important job. We know what is needed to be produced in 941 agricultural basins in Turkey. Basin-based manufacturing process was done, but data size is more than we will optimize. We get better optimization if we can divide this into smaller parts. We looked over them again. We analyzed 'What we have to crop to the fields in the country, to get more yield'. Actually, Turkey can increase the agricultural revenue with a very good optimization," he said.
Pakdemirli pointed out that despite the disaster scenarios outlined in artificial intelligence, there are incredible opportunities and reported that in this area there are important studies such as forecasting of yield, correct use of pesticides and increasing productivity with sensors in the soil.
"WE WILL ESTABLISH A COMMON DATA CENTER IN THE MINISTRY "
Pakdemirli announced that a common data center will be established in the Ministry and the data processing systems of the institutions locating here will be collected in a single center then continued:
"Once we gather all works in one center we will elude duplicated investments. Our efficiency and savings will increase. When citizens are applying to one of our departments, we request them to provide us a document also related to our Ministry. We shouldn't ask the citizen for information that we already have. Therefore, the integration of data centers will serve this purpose. Our goal is to move all our services to the online system "e-devlet". Citizens sometimes refer to associations, chambers and non-governmental organizations while applying for Ministry related issues. When applying to them, they sometimes pay a significant amount of service charge. We would like to provide all our transactions from "e-devlet" free of charge. Our aim is to make citizens be able to do all transactions gradually via internet. Thus, we will direct our personnel in the districts to the fields that are their main task instead of paperwork."
"WE HAVE STARTED PRICE FORECASTING BY METEOROLOGICAL DATA"
Pakdemirli emphazised the importance of meteorological data on agriculture and he stated that better planning and price forecasting will be possible thanks to knowledge of future rainfall and frost data.
The Minister Pakdemirli indicated that they started to head for applying such meteorological services and forecasting yield. "We make yield forecast by meteorological data. I ordered the personnel to start working on one product and we started with lemon. We forecast lemon prices for following months. We are trying to develop these forward-looking forecasts on more products. We will be planning how can we provide more confidential information with forecasts and what kind of measures we can take for lack of production," he said.
"I AM THE INVENTOR OF THE EAR TAG"
Showing the new generation ear tags Mr. Pakdemirli, it is important to count the animals in the country he said.
Explaining that there is a GSM system as an equipment inside the ear tag, "I am also the inventor of the idea. There is no other application in the world. Currently, domestic and foreign companies are working on it. Pilot studies are continuing, we are working on almost 100 animals. If the project is successful, we will expand it. The animal will wake up every 2-3 days and say 'Hello, it's me, Sarı Kız' and it will be understood that she is alive. Current ear tags are not deleted from the inventory after the animal is slaughtered. It is extremely important to follow the presence of animals in Turkey with this instrument." Pakdemirli said.
Pakdemirli remarked that they made an electric tractor prototype which they thought was ready for mass production and said, "We will be launching this in the near future. We have at least 2 tractor manufacturers who are interested in this prototype. If we can do that, we'll decrease our carbon footprint. In addition to this, we will give up the diesel supports that we have seriously implemented. On the other hand, peasants, farmers and producers will have a chance to produce their products at an affordable cost of energy. This will give him a different competitive advantage. "