September 23, 2015
Source: Monsanto Europe-Africa
"Farmers are not dragging a plough and a horse out there, they are high tech,” said Doug Weist, a fourth generation farmer in the American magazine Inc.com, on precision agriculture and its impact on one of the oldest occupations in human history: farming.
According to the article precision agriculture will revolutionise farming as we know it. Precision agriculture involves using technologies such as GPS, sensors and analytics to monitor conditions, crops and equipment in order to efficiently optimise seeds, water, pesticides and fertilisers.
Weist, who is also president of Weist Farms and owner of the consulting firm Farm Tech, compared yield input goals of precision agriculture with traditional agronomy. His analysis showed the average use of fertiliser was 25-30 percent less and yields were 10-15 percent higher with precision agriculture.
As most people know farming today is low tech. While some farmers like Weist; who is 35, leaps at the opportunity precision agriculture brings to his farm, there is understandable reluctance among many farmers who are used to conventional methods or even their gut instincts.
Users need training or consultation on these types of advanced systems. The situation is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle even for farmers who are ahead of this agricultural curve. These farmers are often confronted with a situation where hardware and software from different manufacturers don’t fit well together.
“These guys have been farming for two to three generations without this stuff, and they have paid for the farm, and it has grown. Until it is black and white that it is better, they aren’t going to do it,” said Weist.
There are many challenges for individual farms and the industry as a whole. For example standards need to be defined so that issues of compatibility and data ownership are addressed.
If the concept of advanced technology helping farmers is still hard to get your head around think of it another way: sustainable agriculture. This is the concept of adopting practices that involve less land, water, energy and till usage: summed up as efficient farming. The result is more affordable food for everyone down the chain.
In Europe this is Monsanto’s raison d’être. The AquaTEK ™ project is focused on water conservation in crop systems. It began in 2013 as a public-private partnership between Monsanto Italy, Netafim and the University of Milan, Italy. Its main objective is to increase the productivity of maize per unit of area and per volume of water used.
Farmers are left to determine when and how much water to use to reduce their overhead costs. New technologies are being developed that measure the soil’s water content via satellite, which makes data more accessible to farmers in the field, allowing them to cross-check with weather information.
“Italian agriculture, and in particular maize production, is not making full use of the innovations made available by technology,” said Federico Bertoli, the commercial director of Monsanto Italy.
Also, Monsanto’s partnership with the Climate Corporation back in 2013 is driving forward the concept of greener, cost-efficient farming. A data-driven approach from a variety of sensors means better farming practices. A farmer, e.g. with a free phone app called Climate Basic, is able to plant the right seed with more accuracy and less amounts of water, pesticide and fertiliser in the right place, at just the right time.
As we hurtle into the digital age at breakneck speed, precision agriculture can be seen as a tool or set of tools to help famers get more from the same land with less effort than previous generations.
The original post, How Farmers Are Harvesting Big Data, was written by ‘one time American Idol contestant’ Jenna Broughton, a freelance writer who has been covering the San Francisco Bay Area food and dining scene for the past five years.
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