Smart Farming
Solutions for a healthier,
sustainable future
Smart Farming
Automated and Connected Agriculture
Ramping up production to that degree isn’t easy, but the engineers and farmers of today are working together to create a technological solution: precision agriculture and the “smart farm.”
Agriculture is the oldest human industry, but it’s certainly no stranger to technological change. The industrial revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries replaced handheld tools and horse-drawn plows with gasoline engines and chemical fertilizers.
Now, we’re on the verge of witnessing another fundamental shift in agriculture thanks to a new industrial revolution and the technologies of Industry.
Farm automation, often associated with “smart farming”. An increasing number of companies are working on robotics innovation to develop drones, autonomous tractors, robotic harvesters, automatic watering, and seeding robots. Although these technologies are fairly new, the industry has seen an increasing number of traditional agriculture companies adopt farm automation into their processes.
The primary goal of farm automation technology is to cover easier, mundane tasks. Here are some major technologies that are most commonly being utilized by farms.
We are only at the early stages of farm automation technology, but it will be able to transform agriculture. We offer a path towards sustainable and more efficient agriculture through advancements of technologies, production systems, and software.
Real-Time Monitoring and Analysis
One of the most useful tasks drones can take on is remote monitoring and analysis of fields and crops. Imagine the benefits of using a small fleet of drones instead of a team of workers spending hours on their feet or in a vehicle traveling back and forth across the field to visually check crop conditions.
This is where the connected farm is essential, as all this data needs to be seen to be useful. Farmers can review the data, and only make personal trips out into the fields when there is a specific issue that needs their attention, rather than wasting time and effort by tending to healthy plants.
Given that drones for agricultural use are still early in their evolution, there are a few downsides. Ranges and flight times are not as robust as many farms would need—currently, even the longest-running drones max out at around an hour of flight time before needing to return and recharge.
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What are farmers thinking about ag tech during COVID-19?
For farmers keeping an eye on technologies, easy-to-use, low-cost tools will likely garner the most attention, according to Pat Rogers, a South Carolina farmer and founder of AgFuse.
Can a 15-minute survey help farmers adopt more tech? Growers Insight is betting on it.
This farmer-focused consultancy is aimed at helping farmers understand when and where to adopt ag tech.
The Role of Humans in Agro-Automation
You would think that our automation would remove humans from the farming process but it gives them an even greater purpose. Instead of schlepping equipment and shoveling shit they can focus on the health of their plants and growing an ecosystem, work that computers can’t do. Most importantly this work is appealing to younger generations with creative, technology-enabled skills looking to make a positive impact. No matter how automated the system gets humans will always have an essential role to play, connecting nature to technology. Computers will be better at collecting information, analyzing data, calculating prediction models, and eventually, there will even be autonomous robots that will fix and repair our IoT network and farm machinery. For the foreseeable future computers will not be able to understand what nature is, they can’t feel the pleasure of hearing birds come to life at sunrise or ice-cold spring water sliding down the back of your throat. In an agro-automation ecosystem, our job as humans will be translating the beauties of nature into something that computers can understand and help cultivate.
The automation system may work to optimize a plant’s growth while human researchers look at the role the plant is playing on their farm and veto the automation system if they think the plant should be removed, not improved. By telling the system the problems they are seeing with the current farming methods the system can understand what makes a natural ecosystem so beautiful. It can understand that flowers are important because it makes colorful fields even if they have no productive output. In this way, we can improve farm productivity, the planet’s environment, and humanity’s role in civilization.
