Notice
AI Measures Pollination Activity of Honeybees… Surveillance Robots Monitor Crop Growth
2025-09-25
Technology Demonstration at Smart Farm Innovation Valley
Five Companies Including CES 2025 Winner ‘FarmConnect’
On-site Roundtable Discusses Data Standardization
Ministry of Agriculture: “Continued Support for Commercialization”
Five Companies Including CES 2025 Winner ‘FarmConnect’
On-site Roundtable Discusses Data Standardization
Ministry of Agriculture: “Continued Support for Commercialization”
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The agricultural population is declining, and climate change is intensifying, making smart agriculture not an option but a necessity. (Kim Jeong-wook, Director of Agricultural Innovation Policy, Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs)
On the 23rd, a demonstration of smart agriculture technology integrating big data and artificial intelligence (AI) was held at the Smart Farm Innovation Valley in Sangju, North Gyeongsang Province. Approximately 30 stakeholders interested in smart agriculture gathered, including representatives from relevant agencies, academia, businesses, agricultural corporations, and trainees from the Innovation Valley.
This event was organized to promote related policies and encourage adoption and utilization by farms through demonstrations of AI-applied smart agriculture data collection, utilization technologies, and services. This marks the first time the Ministry has hosted a demonstration of data-based technologies and services supported by its verification program.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is promoting the expansion of data and AI-based smart agriculture to address challenges facing Korean agriculture and rural communities, such as aging populations, population decline, and climate crises. Since 2023, it has been supporting commercialization costs for data-driven, AI-applied smart agriculture technologies through the ‘Smart Agriculture Data Service Demonstration Support Project’.
Five companies participated on-site: △FarmConnect △IT Convergence △IoCrops △The IMC △UBEN.
FarmConnect developed ‘ConnectBee’, the world's first technology detecting pollinator activity in smart farms. Sensors attached to hives analyze pollinator activity levels, pollen transport volume, and gender. AI then analyzes greenhouse environmental data and provides reports. This technology earned the company an Innovation Award at CES 2025 and secured patents in the US, Japan, and other countries.
Most greenhouse horticulture farms growing strawberries, watermelons, tomatoes, and similar crops utilize pollinating bees as their pollination agents. Since only female bees transport pollen, an increase in male bee populations reduces efficiency. This information has been impossible to assess visually, making it an unmanageable area until now.
Kim Moo-hyun, CEO of FarmConnect, emphasized, “Information like the ratio of male pollinating bees and their remaining lifespan is core agricultural data, yet it has been overlooked. ConnectBee will boost productivity and improve farming efficiency.”
IT Convergence and The IMC provide crop growth data through their AI measurement equipment. IoCrops monitors growth via AI autonomous patrol robots. This technology provides crop growth and greenhouse environmental information to support farming decisions. Notably, IT Convergence's solution is also provided within the ‘Smart Farm Korea’ smart agriculture big data platform for farm utilization services.
UBEN launched ‘Chamwoe TalkTalk’, a voice-based generative AI farming management chatbot and farming log service. It collects greenhouse information using an equipment set comprising grow lights, moving fans, and sensors, with AI providing voice-recognition responses on action items for each growth stage.
A field discussion session followed the demonstration. Participants requested enhanced data standardization, strengthened data quality management, and expanded support for service development to improve technological competitiveness.
Additionally, opinions emerged that ‘data literacy education’ and ‘data consulting’ support are needed to enhance farmers' data understanding and analysis capabilities, thereby facilitating service commercialization and broader adoption.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs plans to actively incorporate the opinions raised during the discussion into policy and review improvement measures. It will also continue providing phased support from data supply to demonstration and commercialization to ensure data and AI-based smart agricultural technologies strengthen agricultural productivity and sustainability.
Particularly, as AX (AI Transformation) is being promoted as a national policy task of the new administration, efforts will focus on fostering data and AI-based smart agriculture as a future growth engine for ‘K-Agriculture’. It also aims to create new opportunities through the industrialization of agriculture as a future growth sector.
Kim Jeong-wook, Director of Agricultural and Food Innovation Policy, stated, “The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs is providing multifaceted support, from commercialization to consulting, to help startups and venture companies in the agricultural sector scale up.” He added, “As services spread only when there is field demand, we plan to expand the scale and methods of our support programs.”
Reporter Jeong Yeong-rok log1015@kakao.com