Last Tuesday, the Malaysian Oil Scientists’ & Technologists’ Association (MOSTA) held its annual conference where experts and companies share their scientific progress in the oils and fats field. This year, the one-day event focused on oil palm plantations and was split into three IR 4.0-related themes:
Precision agriculture: This system was touted as a way for more efficient agricultural practices, allowing for better science-based decision making, e.g. assessing land suitability. At least one panelist mentioned climate change as a reason for data-driven precision agriculture practices.
Farming technologies: There is a notable highlight on drones. Sime Darby claimed that its multi-drone operations will be perfected in the next three years for better parallel spraying and opined that smaller plantations may soon have access to drones-as-a-service as the usage increases throughout the industry.
Milling technologies: Panelists were emphasising on the importance of digitising milling practices. Some of the opportunities for growth in this regard include incorporating big cloud computing in the Continuous Emission Monitoring Systems (CAMS) and adopting real-time mobile platforms for mill supervision and inspections.
Source: Chen Zi Yan/Applied Agricultural Resources (AAR; 2021). Mr Chen Zi Yan of AAR presented his team’s assessment of the potential economic costs involved in three different insecticide spraying processes at an 180 ha oil palm plantation.
An interesting observation during the concluding panel discussion: in stark contrast to the overall placid progress-updating event, several panelists voiced frustration over the fact that many of these advancements are apparently contained within corporations; researchers are still struggling to obtain adequate cooperation from the private sector to come up with new tech that would benefit the industry as a whole. Additionally, it was pointed out that there is a shortage of required experts, such as drone pilots and robotics engineers, which will become an increasingly significant concern as more and more plantations adopt newer technologies.