Charoen Pokphand Foods Public Company Limited (CP Foods) joined hands with “42 Bangkok”, a Thailand campus of 42 Network, a world-renowned coding and programming school, to host "Virtual Hackathon by 42 Bangkok X CPF" in an effort to cultivate more talents to accelerate agriculture and food sectors through digital transformation.
“The partnership with a coding school with a worldwide reputation like 42 Bangkok helps Thailand develop much needed agricultural sector prowess,” commented Mr. Sunsern Samaisut, Managing Director of CPF IT Center. “The competition gives Thai programmers, software developers, coders, and engineers a platform to exhibit their digital solutions or innovations for agriculture and food production.”
“CP Foods collaborates with 42 Bangkok to drive both the company and agriculture sector forward in the digital age,” he added. “This programme is aimed at developing young agri-tech programmers to meet demand in agricultural sectors in Thailand. If we can develop digital solutions domestically, the price will be more accessible for farmers and allow more efficient and sustainable farming.”
Participants in the contest were required to address six challenges facing CP Foods and come up with digital solutions that upgrade agriculture process. The challenges focused on application of Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve farming processes. Also, Agriculture GIS Visualisation, Smart Shrimp Farming, On-Shelf product availability with image processing, Document type classification and data extraction for automated data entry, and real-time Food Supply Chain (Conceptual) Model.
“The Virtual Hackathon encourages the competitors to use their ideas and skills to solve real-world challenges. This way, the company can find young prospects who will create a bright future for the sector.”
The Hackathon took place virtually on 26 and 27 June 2021, with a total of 24 teams and 96 people participating.
“Corn – Lab” application from "Popcorn" team won “The Best Award”, the highest prize in the contest. They described their winning idea as: “Making corn farming fun easy and efficient”. The team developed an “all-about-corn knowledge centre” where corn growers could learn how to apply machine learning and artificial intelligence to farm management to help them grow corn efficiently and sustainably. The application also provides solutions to common problems found in corn farming. The team also created a community network of corn growers to share their expertise with others.
“This cooperative excercise is a great opportunity for CP Foods to achieve Thailand’s kitchen of the world vision,” added Mr. Sansern. “Technologies can upgrade agricultural processes for farmers, helping develop Thailand in line with CP Group’s ‘3-benefits’ philosophy that CP Foods always adheres to, namely, benefits to the country, the people and the company.”
42 Bangkok is a Thailand campus of “42”, a world-class education coding school from France. The campus is jointly founded by King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang to provide free programming knowledge, as the demand for programming skills is set to continue to rise for many years to come.
