Growing challenges for agriculture industry
The food industry is facing growing challenges because of the constant increase in the world’s population. There will probably be ten billion people on the Earth by 2050 – and what will they eat? It isn’t only cultivable land that is in short supply; water is also becoming scarcer. With traditional watering, most of the water doesn’t reach the plant at all. New ways of smart farming are needed to react to the increasing pressure on the food industry.
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Visit the digital indoor garden
At the underground Siemens test lab in Munich, sowing, watering, fertilizing, and harvesting radishes, lettuce, and other vegetables is done automatically – by a gardening robot. Using simulation models – a Digital Twin of the indoor garden – calculations are performed to determine what the robot has to do to ensure each plant gets exactly the right quantity of nutrients and water it needs for ideal growth. Thanks to the robot’s high precision, less water is consumed. And thanks to constantly gathering data with IoT operating system MindSphere from Siemens, it’s possible to provide much higher transparency to consumers about the foodstuffs' properties.
Our comprehensive concept of the Digital Twin consists of three forms: the Digital Twin of the product, the Digital Twin of production, and the Digital Twin of the performance of both product and production. Thanks to our comprehensive domain expertise and optimized tools, Siemens is the only company that offers this holistic approach.
There is tremendous value gained from performing "what if" scenarios and predicting future performance with the digital twin. The ultimate goal of the Digital Twin is in the closed-loop connection between the virtual world of product development and production planning with the physical world of production system and product performance. Through this connection actionable insights is gained from the physical world for informed decisions throughout the lifecycle of products and production operations.
Our holistic approach focusing not only on production but also on the resource and buildings used on foodstuff production.
Generating added value for the controlled environment agriculture industry
The controlled environment agriculture industry is in a transition phase. In order to achieve additional growth, it needs to tackle environmental challenges, develop new farming concepts, and consistently integrate automation and digitalization into their value chain.
Siemens has established a Center of Competence for the controlled environment agriculture industry where our experts are working on supporting companies to realize their digital transformation. This support ranges from products and solutions to consulting and services. This way companies of any size can start their digitalization process at any point of their value chain.
