Smart Rice Postharvest and Mechanization Machinery Management 
Background
EasyHarvest is a digital tool developed by IRRI to provide better access to harvester services and enable optimized agricultural machinery scheduling. Its efficient use promotes higher overall income for farmers and contractors, increased sustainability of rice production, reduction of hazardous labor and the increase in smart farming practices, leading to an improved rice value chain.
Challenge
Inefficient scheduling and poor choice of machinery often result in high operational costs, increased crop losses and environmental footprint.
Sound farm management depends on the availability of on-demand machinery services which, until now, have been challenging for farmers who often could not anticipate service schedules.
How does it work?
EasyHarvest is a digital tool available as an Android mobile application that links the farmers with machinery service providers. It is designed to optimize the scheduling of combine harvester services corresponding to the actual needs of farmers and availability of the combine harvesters. EasyHarvest uses algorithms that consider field conditions, anticipated harvesting dates, and available infrastructure. As with most data driven tools, EasyHarvest becomes “smarter” as more data parameters are used.
As of April 2020, EasyHarvest has the following core components:
- Access to real-time geo-location of combine harvesters via GPS devices
- Access to a database containing field conditions of registered farmers’ fields,
including location and harvesting-related parameters - A self-service data management dashboard that can be accessed by account
holders to manage their fields or machinery - Two machinery scheduling options: a self-service booking of machinery done by the
field owner and a resource-optimization option tailored to larger scales, wherein both
field and machine resources are managed by a single entity, making harvesters
field matching fully automated. - An interface that can include other data sources on precision farming and digital
agriculture, especially on the environmental impact of straw burning, nutrient
management, and other digital platforms for agriculture.
Next Steps
The IRRI Mechanization and Postharvest Cluster has developed a concept for EasyHarvestPro, which includes:
- Optimized scheduling and operations: combine harvester, laser leveling machines,
transplanters, straw balers and more - Smart fertilizer and pesticide application (image processing-based)
- Smart postharvest management (drying and storage, modeling and remote sensing
- Developed business models in cooperation with private sectors partners, in the
Philippines, India, Cambodia, and Thailand. - Sustainability analysis including life cycle assessment to evaluate the economic,
environmental, and social impacts.
IRRI aims to create a more robust decision support tool to promote best practices into the rice farming value chain for sustainable rice production.
For more information, contact Nguyen Van Hung hung.nguyen@irri.org