The Smart Agriculture Online Presentation Seminars is to be held on October 15 and 22 by the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) of the Council of Agriculture (COA), and marks the official beginning of the two-week "2021 International Conference on Smart Agriculture." The themes of the Seminar are “Great Leap Forward in Cultivation Facilities to Save Labor'', “Digital Technologies Widely Applied in the Transformation of Fishery, Poultry and Livestock Industries'', “Pest Mediums Easily Detected to Ensure Crop Safety'', and “Unmanned Vehicles as Helpers in Open-air Planting." The agenda of the Seminar include the use of the latest smart technologies in farming, fishery, and livestock industries. The R&D results of various stages of agricultural production, processing and marketing are presented, and the intelligent production and marketing management models are developed to provide consumers with agricultural products of safety and traceability.

Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute (TARI) explained that there are a total of 43 presentations in this Seminar with at least two points of highlights in each one of the four themes. All of these are the technologies/equipment that is most needed by the industries now. For instance, the fully automatic bag machine that produces 26-30 PP bags per minute and saves 90% of labor cost is what the mushroom industry has been waiting for. The certified knowledge base technology assists aquafarmers to quickly record the production process, saving 520 hours of work per year on data arrangement. The sow estrus intelligent monitoring system can accurately identify the sow’s estrus, reducing the demand for experienced staff by 730 hours per year. The smart pest control system provides farmers with pest identification services and recommendations on pesticide use, so the diseases are controlled in time. The use of drones with the adjustable spraying function on the chilli thrips of the lotus can reduce the inconvenience of farmers working in the lotus ponds and promote the pest control rate to 80%. The remote-controlled crawler tractors powered by batteries can reduce gas pollution and work injuries and shorten the distance of moving the crops to the vehicle, increasing the operation efficiency by 15%.

TARI further explained that the online seminars on October 15 and 22 are the opening events of the 2021 Smart Agriculture series. Then, the 2021 International Conference on Smart Agriculture will officially start on October 26 and 27, in which experts from the Asian Productivity Organization, Japan and ROC(Taiwan) will present their research results. As the vacancies are limited, interested farmers or enterprise operators are welcome to register early (URL: https://forms.gle/PQbB3tqnxkPa8Cxc6). The technical papers presented will also be published on the Smart Agriculture website (URL: https://www.intelligentagri.com.tw) for those who cannot make it to the conference.