About Future Cropping

The aim of Future Cropping is to increase crop yield and quality without increasing the environmental impact.

The overall aim of Future Cropping is to utilize the potential benefits of precision farming and data communication, by integrating large amounts of data from agro- and environmental technologies with area and climate data. Based on these data, a decision tools will be developed as well as new technologies to support real time decision making in the field.

Benefits for farmers

Farmers already have large amounts of data available. E.g. yield monitoring data, GPS registrations and data on soil types and climate. Machinery equipped with sensors is expected to harvest even more data during the daily farm management. And data may be of great value if you know how to use it.
Future Cropping will develop a decision tool that collects data and combine data from different sources. The tool will support real time decision making adapted to each specific part of a field and thereby optimize crop management.

Export and Environment

Not only farmers can expect interesting results from Future Cropping. We also expect growth in the export of Danish agro- and environmental technology as a positive side effect. Furthermore, Future Cropping, will bring us closer to the shift towards differentiated environmental regulation.

Fields for demonstration

New technologies and solutions will be tested and demonstrated continuously though the project period. The demonstrations are expected to document the potential of precision farming and collect data for further optimization and product development.

Partners

Cooperation between universities, companies and other stakeholders is an important part of Future Cropping. The broad cooperation provides us with the opportunity to collect, connect and analyse vast amounts of data, thereby enabling farmers to receive optimal decision support for each specific field locations.

13 universities, machine manufacturers and consultancy firms are partners in the project. Partners work in nine different work packages.

Work Packages

1. Data platform
2. Impact assessment
3. Test of new farm machinery
4. Improved soil management
5. Intelligent fertilizer application
6. Microorganisms
7. Weed mapping
8. Harvest sequence after crop after quality
9. Reduced leaching of nutrients

Schedule

The project runs from mid-2015 to mid-2020.

Financing

The Innovation Fond contributes with 50 percent of the budget in the partnership. The remaining 50 percent are covered by the respective partners. The partnership runs for five years and the overall budgets sums to 99,990 m DKK. The Innovation Fond is part of the INNO+ program, started in spring 2014. You can read about Future Cropping on the Innovation Fond website.

Events

Future events open to public will demonstrate technologies and solutions relevant to the project. The events will be announced on this page.