Designing profitable and climate-smart farms using virtual reality

RESEARCH ARTICLE Designing profitable and climate-smart farms using virtual reality Remy LasseurID1*, Seth Laurenson1, Mohsin Ali2, Ian Loh2, Mike MackayID1 1 AgResearch, Lincoln Research Centre, Private Bag 4749, Christchurch, New Zealand, 2 Mohsin Media Designer, Wellington, New Zealand * remy.lasseur@agresearch.co.nz Abstract Many pastoral farmers are searching for ways to lower the carbon emission footprint that is generated by livestock. Planting trees on the farm is currently a popular option for farmers to offset their emissions yet requires knowledge of suitable tree species and locations to plant them. This paper describes a decision-support tool aimed at helping farmers to create and visualise different planting designs while balancing the objectives of sequestering carbon and maintaining farm profitability. We take an innovative approach by combining virtual real- ity technology with biophysical models to create an environment where the user can actively create virtual future farm scenarios. Through the creation process, the user can simulta- neously balance multiple objectives including farm aesthetics, economic returns, business and environmental ambitions, and carbon emissions (net) balance. For this proof-of-concept study, we incorporate virtual reality technology in Unreal Engine, environmental and finan- cial data, and high-resolution spatial layers from an operational 400-hectare livestock farm in New Zealand. Introduction Global agriculture is facing a significant challenge as it transitions towards greater sustainabil-

ity [1]. There is a strong expectation that digital technology will have an important role in sup- porting farmer decision-making at both an operational and strategic level as they transition to more sustainable food production systems [2]. In New Zealand, a growing array of digital tools are available to support farmers in making day-to-day business decisions. However, generally these tools are limited in functionality that enables users to interact with the underlying scien- tific models and databases [3]. In this paper we describe the development of an innovative vir- tual reality (VR) application that combines agricultural economics, environmental metrics, and VR. The tool is targeted at livestock farmers who are considering afforesting all or some of their farmland. Our opening assumption was that the integration of VR would add a new and valuable dimension to existing farmer decision support tools because landowners are able to see, explore and compare (visually and quantitatively) future planting strategies. This assump- tion has been informed by some recent examples in the literature [4–6]. Our project is relevant in New Zealand because farmers are currently adapting to a several recent regulatory changes that are providing the impetus to consider new land uses. For PLOS ONE PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286723 June 2, 2023 1 / 16 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Lasseur R, Laurenson S, Ali M, Loh I, Mackay M (2023) Designing profitable and climate-

smart farms using virtual reality. PLoS ONE 18(6): e0286723. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0286723 Editor: Jun Yang, Northeastern University (Shenyang China), CHINA Received: January 19, 2023 Accepted: May 19, 2023 Published: June 2, 2023 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0286723 Copyright: © 2023 Lasseur et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Funding: This project was funded by the New Zealand Ministry for Business, Innovation and