Special Focus Paper—Technology and Innovation in Agriculture: The Azores Case Study

Technology and Innovation in Agriculture:

The Azores Case Study
https://doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v11i5.7070

E.L.D.G.S. Silva!"!#
Universidade dos Açores, CEEAplA, Angra do Heroísmo, Açores – Portugal
[email protected]

C.M.M. Oliveira
SDASM, Ponta Delgada, Portugal

A.B. Mendes, H.M.G.F.O. Guerra

Universidade dos Açores, Algoritmi, Ponta Delgada, Portugal

Abstract—A growing population world might exceed its food supply in the
future. Food availability needs an increasing agricultural productivity and pro-
duction through technology and innovation. European concerns about innova-
tion policies reflected on the Lisbon Agenda include the European program
PROPRURAL+ for the Portuguese Azores Islands. The agricultural innovation
in the Azores started with the Green Revolution, which increased agricultural
production, using seeds, fertilizers, chemical products and agricultural equip-
ment. But much more innovation is needed for the Azores to became a well-
sustained and competitive European region in this economic sector. For exam-
ple, concerning milk, the region is responsible for more than 30% of the nation-
al production. But, since the liberalization in EU imposed by the global mar-
kets, a crisis in the sector is installed. Dairy producers are now facing many dif-
ficulties in trying to enhance the profitability of their farms, by reducing costs
and improving efficiency. A characterization of the Azorean agriculture, em-
phasizing the milk production sector is presented. The specificities and the po-
tential of the region are discussed and some agricultural innovations with IoT
technologies are pointed out.

Keywords—technology; agriculture; robot; data mining

1 Introduction

Currently there are more than 7 billion inhabitants on planet Earth. In the next 10
years, it is estimated that the population will increase by more than a billion. Thus,
inevitably the demand for food will increase in the near future and agriculture is at the
center of the three challenges of the XXI century: climate change, depletion of natural
resources, and food security [1].
All these factors demand a significant increase in agricultural productivity and pro-
duction through technology and innovation. Innovation is the process of translating an

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Special Focus Paper—Technology and Innovation in Agriculture: The Azores Case Study

idea or an invention into a good or a service that creates value or for which customers
will pay. On the other hand, technology concerns the use of scientific knowledge to
solve practical problems. To be innovative, the idea must be applied with an associat-
ed financial cost, and with the aim to satisfy a specific need.
Madureira et al. [2] present the innovative concept in agriculture and the branches
of the innovation. According to these authors, innovation in Agriculture is the intro-
duction of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), process, organi-
zational structure or marketing method. Product innovation is defined by changes to
its technical characteristics, with the offer of new features; focus on product quality or
new ways of use / application. Process innovation is the introduction of a new or sig-
nificantly improved production or delivery method, including significant changes in
techniques, equipment or software. Organizational innovation is the introduction of a
new structure or method of business organization or external relations. Finally, the
marketing innovation occurs by introducing a new marketing method that involves
significant changes in the design of the product or packaging. Marketing innovation is
also about placing on the market or new ways of marketing, promotion or price.
There are several types of innovation: 1) technological innovation, 2) non-
technological innovation, 3) mixed innovation: with influence of the previous two.
Finally, 4) hidden or soft innovation (non-technological origin, not linked to R&D)
and related to human resources, interactions and / or cooperation, and the role of vari-
ous actors of innovation.
Madureira et al. [2] analyze the soft innovation in the Portuguese rural sector. Soft
innovation is an important source of innovation in agriculture.
More than just a trend, innovation and new technology will be a need for
sustainable and efficient agricultural production. The challenges ahead justify the
increasingly arising companies to invest in this sector. Examples can be found in
several Japanese companies, such as Panasonic, Toshiba, Sharp, Sony or Fujitsu,
historically linked to electronics. Currently, those companies are experimenting in the
production of strawberries in Dubai, in the production of lettuces in Japanese
industrial complexes used in electronics manufacture or in the production of spinach
in Singapore.
Therefore, it is necessary to clarify what is meant by these two so interlinked
concepts in agriculture. Technology is associated with the creation of new products
and / or new processes, while innovation is the introduction of technology in the
agricultural reality. Given the paramount importance of innovation in agriculture we
present the different types of innovation, giving special attention to hidden innovation
and the innovation in the European policies (Lisbon Agenda). The particular case of
the Azores is covered by means of the PROPRURAL + Community program [3].
In fact, the major innovation steps were named the Green Revolution and were
based on technology introduction in agriculture to achieve higher productivity through
the development of research in seeds, soil fertility, use of pesticides and
mechanization including IoT [4,5]. Sensors and apps have a long history in
agriculture, but recently their generalization became a competitive factor.
Preoccupations with water consumption, soil improvement, species rotation, and
animal growing can be addressed by IoT technologies in such a way that the term

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Special Focus Paper—Technology and Innovation in Agriculture: The Azores Case Study

Smart Agriculture is becoming common sense. One example is the climate-smart

agriculture (CSA), which is an approach for transforming and reorienting agricultural
systems to support food security under the new realities of climate change [6].
New solutions for business challenges with machine-to-machine (M2M) communi-
cation are also in great demand in agriculture, and some of the most compelling IoT
architectures and applications are coming from the agricultural industry. One example
is the prototype mentioned by Schuster et al. [7], which puts forth an Internet-based
architecture for machine-to-machine communication and computation that enhances
bio-productivity in agriculture. The prototype utilizes an auxiliary language to enable
data interoperability in a synthetic computing environment and to make connections
between data and mathematical models. The approach also includes some aspects of
cloud and context aware computing.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: section II is devoted to explain in de-
tail the main aspects relating to innovation in agriculture, suitable for application to
the Azorean reality in the case study of section III; and also, to present an Azorean
agriculture characterization based on the Census from 1998. Section III presents the
Azorean case study of innovation concerning milk production. Finally, some conclu-
sions and ideas for further work are presented in section IV.

2 Innovation in European Union and Azores

The world population is growing faster than the availability of food and this drives
an increasing agricultural production and productivity through technology and / or
innovation. The FAO projection of world population is 8.5 billion (2030); 9.7 billion
(2050) and 11.2 billion (2100). In a global economic crisis situation, the food demand
for a growing population imposes on global leaders the challenge of increasing agri-
cultural production in a sustainable manner. As said by Hélder Muteia (FAO) in the
workshop Demanda Mundial por Alimentos e o Combate à Fome, «it will not be easy.
To answer this demand, global food production must grow by about 70%.» This is a
clear opportunity for innovation and technology.
Innovation is an EU fundamental bet since the 2000 Lisbon Agenda. There was
recognition and appreciation of knowledge and innovation as drivers for competitive-
ness, sustainability, social cohesion and Europe 2020 maintain the goal of Agenda
2000. In the Azores islands innovation is promoted in the agricultural sector with the
European program PRORURAL (+) – specially action 16, and Sub action 16.1 - Es-
tablishment and operation of operational groups of the European Innovation Partner-
ship (EIP) for agricultural productivity and sustainability; Sub action 16.2 - Support
for pilot projects and the development of new products, practices, processes and tech-
nologies; Sub action 16.3 - Cooperation between small operators with common pro-
cess and sharing facilities and resources; Sub action 16.4 - Cooperation for develop-
ment and promotion of short supply chains and local markets and Sub action 16.5 -
Intervention to mitigate and adapt to climate change and environmental projects and
practices.

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Special Focus Paper—Technology and Innovation in Agriculture: The Azores Case Study

In the agricultural field, innovation appeared with the Green Revolution [4,5] and
associated with technological innovations for higher productivity through the devel-
opment of research in seeds, soil fertilization, pesticide use and mechanization. The
Green Revolution has enabled the development of appropriate seeds for specific types
of soils and climates, soil adaptation for planting and development of machinery. The
seeds have high resistance to different types of pests and diseases, its planting, com-
bined with the use of pesticides, fertilizers, agricultural implements and machines,
significantly increases agricultural production. There has been an extraordinary in-
crease in food production. In Mexico, wheat has quadrupled its production in seven
years.
Another example is the large increase in production and harvest in the Philippines
rice. However, world hunger did not reduce, because food production in developing
countries is aimed, mainly, for the industrialized rich countries such as the United
States, Japan and the European Union. The modernization in the fields changed the
agrarian structure. Small producers, who failed to adapt to new production techniques,
could not achieve enough productivity to compete with big agricultural companies,
and have requested large bank loans for the mechanization of activities. Their only
form of payment is to sell the property to other producers. The Green Revolution
provided technologies that achieve greater efficiency in agricultural production, sig-
nificantly increasing food production. However, world hunger has not been resolved,
edging out the humanitarian discourse to increase food production to end hunger in
developing countries.
Innovation can also be acquired in the agricultural field through Data Mining tech-
niques, using machine learning and statistical algorithms to extract patterns from data,
which lead to new knowledge and better forecasts and decisions [8]. A well-known
possible example is the production prediction using historical data obtained in agricul-
ture in recent years.
Some of the Data Mining algorithms commonly used in agriculture are: 1) Super-
vised algorithms like some Artificial Neural Networks, Support Vector machines; and
K-Nearest Neighbor algorithms; 2) Non-supervised algorithms (clustering) like: K-
Means; Principal Component Analysis, Multiple Regression Model, Biclustering
Techniques [8].
Ramesh and Vardhan [9] had estimated the crop production using two alternative
methods (K-means clustering algorithm and regression model). They analyzed data
from 44 years (1965 to 2009), using as dependent variable (target) rainfall, and inde-
pendent variables: year, seeded area and production. The K-means algorithm found 4
clusters based on annual rainfall: cluster 1 - 1st 3 years, cluster 2 - with 21 years,
cluster 3- with 18 years and cluster 4- with 2 years) As a result, they found similar
average production between the real data and the models (linear regression and K-
means production). For instance, in cluster 3, the average production from actual data
was 473,213, linear regression 469,635 and k-means algorithm 419,095. These results
bear witness to the influence of climatic conditions (mainly rainfall).

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Table 1. Structural characteristic of Azorean Agriculture, Agricultural Census: 1989, 1999 and
2009.
1989 1999 2009 Var
1. Average size agricultural
4.8 6.3 8.9 !
holdings (ha)
2. Indicators for community of farm typology
i) Holdings number 24,706 19,280 13,541 "
ii) VPPT (103 #) of farms
n.a. n.a. 316,681 --
specializing in livestock

Table 2. Technological characteristic of Azorean Agriculture, according with Agricultural

Census: 1989, 1999 and 2009.
1989 1999 2009 Var
1. Effective Animal
i) No. of livestock per ha of SAU
1.43 1.72 1.71 !
in RAA
ii) Cattle (No. of animal/farm) by
15.8 24.1 32.0 !
exploration
iii) Dairy cows (No. of
10.3 19.3 28.2 !
animal/farm)
2. Indicators for farm machinery
i) No. of farms with farm
equipment and type of agricultural 2,716 4,490 4,893 !
machinery
ii) No. of tractors of farms and
1,899 2,630 3,750 !
classes of SAU
iii) No. of milking parlours of
n.a n.a 373 -
farms and old milking parlours
iv) No. of mobile milking machine
n.a n.a 2,166 -
of farms and age of the machines.

Silva et al. [10] analyse the structural characteristics of the Azorean Agricultural
sector, as seen in Table 1 and Table 2. The agricultural size of holdings has increased
in the last 20 years, from 4.8 to 89 hectares and as a consequence, the number of hold-
ing has decreased. The normalized value of production was 316,681 (103) #.
The total number of animals (dairy cows and beef) has increased from 1989 to
2009, as well the stock density (from 1.43 to 1.71). Farms with farm machinery in-
creased from 2,716 to 4,893 (between 1989 and 2009) and the numbers of tractors are
a big contribution, which increased from 1,899 to 3,750 (between 1989 and 2009).
For comparison purposes we use 1989 as the zero year for implementation of inno-
vation in the Azores. Portugal joined the European Union in 1986, and at that time
Portuguese agriculture was very "backward" with practically no agricultural equip-
ment and the production systems were more extensive, less productive and with less
specialized breeds.
Since then, and until Portuguese agriculture started using Community funds, a few
years passed, and although we cannot say with certitude, in 1987 or 1988 there were

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no large funds to support agriculture. For these reasons, we considered the year 1989,
from data published in the General Agricultural Census, as base year (year zero)
without any "technological innovation".
The following years, and always taking advantage of Agricultural Census data
(already published) corresponded to data that already includes technological
innovation.
In São Miguel, Sampaio da Nóvoa [11] uses the work of [12] to evaluate the
current technological evolution of the São Miguel agriculture, and concludes that the
process of technological transformation at this time has a very positive economic
impact on the income of producers. In fact, these authors confirm that producers
greatly improved their competitive power and enhanced their economic viability in
the context of the period. They also conclude that technological evolution is a
function of the valuable work of experimentation and popularization, essential to the
development of Azorean agriculture. For the authors in [11, 12] the main
technological changes were: re-seeding of older and / or degraded pastures; rational
scheme of fertilization; appropriate technologies for the conservation of silage. These
authors also recommend cattle header control; generalization of artificial
insemination; increased annual growth rate of herds; rational administration of
concentrate; use of other energy sources (e.g. beet). Finally they indorse replacing
whole milk for calf feeding; generalization of milking systems; accomplishment of
crosses of cattle adapted to the productive vocation; and creation of efficient meat
production systems that bring calves from birth to slaughter.

3 The Case Study of Azores Innovation

New technologies adopted by European farmers are the key to maintaining Europe
competitiveness in the global market. However, these technologies are not accessible
in the same way, the agricultural structure varying widely from country to country,
from region to region. In effect, in the Member States of the European Union (EU) it
varies as a function of differences in geology, topography, climate and natural
resources, as well as diversity of regional activities, infrastructure and social customs
[3].
There were about 12.2 million farms across the EU-28 in 2010, working 174.1
million hectares of land (the utilized agricultural area) or two fifths (40.0%) of the
total land area of the EU-28. The average size of each agricultural holding (farm) in
the EU-28 was 14.2 hectares.
Milk production is the most important sector after cereal production, representing
12.7% of the agricultural activity in the EU-28. This sector is characterized by
presenting a diverse structure in the EU Member States, both in terms of size of farms
and dairy effective, and actual milk production. In 2013, total cow milk collection in
the EU-28 amounted to about 141 million tonnes [3].
Regarding the Azores, this is a sector that has been expanding in some islands,
especially in the island of São Miguel.

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Over the centuries, the Azores struggled with serious crises in the agricultural
sector, leading to the introduction of new crops and new technologies. Presently, the
region is again facing a new serious crisis, this time in the dairy sector.
The milk sector has been rising in some islands, especially in São Miguel island.
Currently the region produces more than 30% of the national milk production. In spite
of having witnessed a modernization of the sector in recent decades, the region
struggles due to the small farm size and high fragmentation.
In the present scenario of milk production liberalization in Europe and
competitiveness imposed by global markets, together with the effort that has been
observed but that should be enhanced by the industry, producers who are forced to
improve farm profitability have no alternative but to reduce costs and improve
efficiency.
Today agriculture has a very distant reality from a relatively recent past. New
technologies are increasingly emerging for the farm environment, and behind these
technologies are engineers, scientists, biologists, technicians which directly or
indirectly depend also on agriculture.
Thus, there are new tools that give producers a greater capacity for decision. But in
the Azores specificity there are extra constraints, including the animal transhumance
and insularity of the region, as well as the long distance to market and the poor
literacy of farmers. The fact that cows remain in the pasture all year has limited
somewhat the investment in these types of equipment.
Within the most relevant technologies that is possible to find in São Miguel farms,
stand out modern management software, monitoring systems and video surveillance,
pedometers for estrus detection, automatic feeders with individual metering of feed,
separation curtains and milking process control. Some of this can be understood as
IoT in the sense that pedometers or surveillance feed data to a system that can act on
site and IP codes and cellular apps are frequently used.
Effective management software tools already have some expression. In the dairy
farms, the daily, repetitive and cyclical interventions inevitably require records. Many
of the farmers have this information recorded on paper, however this system makes it
difficult to apply the concept of "Farm to Fork"screening, does not allow the issuing
of alerts, hampers the processing of data and a more detailed analysis of available
information.
A large range of effective management software tools are available in the market,
some with the latest technology, consisting of web applications accessible from any
computer, tablet or smartphone with internet access, without the need for software
installation.
Some farms already have electronic identification systems (RFID) with various
purposes, from the control of the feeding process, to assessing the supply of
concentrates and balancing it with the cow individual nutrient needs. These stations
have identification readers and when the animal approaches provide them concentrate
according to the levels of production, the phase of lactation and regulate portions
during the day, thereby reducing metabolic disorders (Figure 1).
Depending on the equipment available on the farm, the electronic identification of
animals enables the control of the milking process with equipment that perform

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measurements of individual production (Figure 2), the exportation and the computer
processing of the data collected. When animals are being treated, this information is
recorded in the clinical history of the animals, the system preventing them from
accidentally being milked, to avoid milk contamination in the cooling tank.

Fig. 1. Identification necklace with associated RFID chip

Fig. 2. Feeding Stations.

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There are also milking equipment that by measuring the electrical conductivity of
milk enable the detection of mastitis and / or heats. More recently have come to São
Miguel more sophisticated devices that detect the presence of blood in the milk,
thereby preventing disease and eluding tank contamination (Figure 3).
The RFID tags are usually associated with the use of pedometers, electronic
devices for assessing the activity of animals via the number of steps. Cattle has cyclic
reproductive behaviour, and the number of steps increases past the point when the
female rut, this information being transmitted to a central computer which analyzes
the data and triggers alerts, thereby reducing hand labour with the observation of
animals and improves reproductive efficiency, and in consequence the annual
productivity.
The Rural Development Programmes of the Azores have enabled farmers to access
EU funds and invest in the modernization of farms. In recent years, we have seen the
construction of fixed stables and milking, on larger farms it is sometimes possible to
find gates separating animals. It is an automatic system, controlled by software that
allows the separation of animals for simple and stress-free intervention (Figure 4).
The Voluntary Milking System (VMS) is already a very common reality in the Por-
tuguese mainland, and although there are producers who intend to adopt this system in
the Azores, it is not yet to be found there, quite possibly because it is very expensive.
In fact, a VMS requires specialized technical assistance, and above all, VMSs are
applied on farms with different livestock management from the Azorean reality, re-
quiring that the animals remain stabled 24 hours a day.
We believe that adopting a mid-term strategy it is possible to improve innovation
in the Azorean agriculture, by developing new systems able to integrate the legacy
systems and prepared to collecting and analyzing data generated by IoT devices, ap-
plying data mining techniques to provide efficient decision systems and, thus, con-
tribute to help Azores to become a well-sustained and competitive EU region.

Fig. 3. Milk Meter Appliance.

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Fig. 4. Automatic gates for separating animals.

4 Conclusion and Future Work

Technology and innovation promote agricultural production and productivity, be-

ing a resource to be used for obtaining food and income to rural communities.
Data mining, although not much used in the agricultural field, presents a potential
for the development of agricultural production and provides tools to support agricul-
tural producer decisions, especially when coupled with IoT devices for data collec-
tion.
We propose to survey results on how well technology is accepted by Azorean
farmers in following works.

5 References
[1] FAO “Global agriculture towards 2050” high-level expert forum, Roma 2-3 October 2009.
[2] Madureira, L., Gamito, T.M., Ferreira, D., Portela, J. ”Inovação em Portugal Rural, Dete-
tar, Medir e Valorizar”, Principia, 2013, 200p.
[3] Eurostat Agriculture, forestry and fishery statistics Eurostat Pocketbooks, European Union,
2013. Available: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3930297/5968754/KS-FK-13-
001-EN.PDF/ef39caf7-60b9-4ab3-b9dc-3175b15feaa6
[4] FAO “Towards a New Green Revolution”, in Report from the World Food Summit: Food
for All. Rome 13–17 November 1996.
[5] Gaud, William S. "The Green Revolution: Accomplishments and Apprehensions". AgBio-
World., 8 March 1968.

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[6] Leslie Lipper “Climate-smart agriculture for food security” Nature Climate Change, vol. 4,
pp. 1068–1072, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2437
[7] Schuster, E.W.; Lee, H.-G.; Ehsani, R.; Allen, S.J.; Rogers, J.S.; “Machine-to-machine
communication for agricultural systems: An XML-based auxiliary language to enhance
semantic interoperability” Computers and Electronics in Agriculture Volume 78, Issue 2,
X, pp. 150–161, September 2011.
[8] Hetal Patel and Dharmendra Patel “A Brief survey of Data Mining Techniques Applied to
Agricultural Data” International Journal of Computer Applications Volume 95 - Number
9, 2014.
[9] Ramesh, D. & Vishnu Vardhan, B., “Data Mining Techniques and Applications to Agri-
cultural Yield Data”, International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Com-
munication Engineering, Vol. 2, Issue 9, September 2013, 3477- 3480.
[10] Silva, E., Jonnalagedda, S. and Marta-Costa, A., “The Efficiency of POSEI and
PRORURAL Programs in Azores Islands Development” in IFSA 2016 - Symposium Work-
shop 5.3 Rural Development Policies in the Peripheral Southern and Eastern European
Regions, 2016, U.K
[11] Sampaio da Nóvoa, Isabel C.B.L. 1992. Perspectivas de Evolução Tecnológica da Agro-
pecuária Micaelense face à integração na Comunidade Económica Europeia (Óptica Eco-
nómica). Relatório de Estágio do Curso de Engenheiro Agrónomo. Universidade Técnica
de Lisboa, Instituto Superior de Agronomia. Lisboa.
[12] Avillez, Francisco (1991). Estudo de base microeconómica sobre as prespectivas do de-
senvolvimento da Agricultura dos Açores. Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Instituto Supe-
rior de Agronomia. Lisboa.

6 Authors

E.L.D.G.S. Silva (corresponding author) is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of

Agrarian Sciences and Environment, Azores University, Angra do Heroísmo. Açores,
Portugal and a researcher in CEEAplA, Ponta Delgada, Açores, Portugal (e-mail emi-
[email protected]).
C.M.M. Oliveira, is a Senior Technician in SDASM, the São Miguel Agrarian
Services, Ponta Delgada, Açores, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected]).
A.B.Mendes is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Sciences and Technology,
Azores University, Ponta Delgada. Açores, Portugal and a researcher in Algoritmi
Research Center, Minho University, Portugal (e-mail: [email protected]).
H.M.G.F.O. Guerra is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Sciences and
Technology, Azores University, Ponta Delgada. Açores, Portugal and a researcher in
Algoritmi Research Center, Minho University, Portugal (e-mail: he-
[email protected]).

Article submitted 27 April 2017. Published as resubmitted by the authors 17 June 2017.

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