A CORNISH-based company has developed software to revolutionise the way website search tools can be used by agri-businesses to help them find what they are looking for.

Software company SimSage has developed a downloadable plugin website search function, which uses artificial intelligence to understand agriculture’s natural language.

A farmer typing ‘artificial insemination’ into the Google search bar will provide a colourful list of results, but unlikely will it be the shade they were looking for.

“In industry, natural language is the use and interpretation of words and phrases that are specific to that sector,” says co-founder Sean Wilson.

Acronyms are another sticking point.

“Type AI into any popular search engine and ‘Artificial Intelligence’ will dominate the search results — even when combined with ‘agriculture’ — but standard search functions aren’t configured to the broad range of agricultural language.”

Websites

While this example may seem trivial, it reflects on the incompatibilities creating barriers for an industry trying to keep digital pace.

“When looking at farmers’ web use, Duchy College’s Rural Business School (RBS) found that farmers are online to find important information; most frequent in those searches were government websites,” explains Mr Wilson.

Additionally, finding information is often hindered by inadequate search engines — with participants calling for a ‘farmers Google’.

The information gained through the RBS survey highlighted an opportunity for the business to adapt its original software.

“SimSage started up in May 2019 with our core product — software aimed at streamlining a business’s internal information storage and sourcing,” explains Mr Wilson.

“While the original software has been successfully implemented in agri-business — including Glas Data’s knowledge base and data connect platform — we could see our core technology tackling challenges raised through the RBS survey.”

With the help of grant funding through Agri-Tech Cornwall and the Cornwall Development Company, SimSage brought in a range of partners to speed up this development.

SimSage is now working with Farming Health Hub to enable access to information covering multiple farming topics from a wide range of sources in one place. “Ordinarily, the more information there is, the more complicated and time consuming a search can become, but the plugin simplifies all that,” says Mr Wilson.

However, once configured, the plugin uses artificial intelligence to understand farming language and searches. From which frequently asked questions can be automated.

This means farmers can type in a question or keywords into the Hub’s search tool and quickly find specific information, no matter how they pose their query.