As Tom Oswald drives a tractor wideness a soybean field on his farm, his vision are on a computer screen that shows his precise location, the speed of the tractor, exactly how much yield protection material is stuff unromantic at each point and more. He can watch the screen closely considering the tractor uses autosteer to move wideness the field in a straight line.
These technologies have wilt worldwide on farms considering of many benefits they provide for farmers, consumers and the environment.
GPS, sensors, and other digital tools and data analytics are tabbed precision ag, or information technology unromantic to agriculture, said Dr. Terry Griffin, socialize professor at Kansas State University.
“Farming uses technology rivaling the most digital of industries,” Dr. Griffin said. “Just like many of the cars our readers drive, sublet equipment collects diagnostic data to push up to the deject so that the manufacturer and sublet operator can wangle that data for their purposes.”
Oswald became interested in precision threshing considering he wanted to protect the soil on his northwest Iowa farm.
“Our land here is gently rolling and I really wanted to focus on reducing soil erosion. I decided I needed to do something to largest hold the soil on our gently rolling slopes,” he said.
Oswald began by reducing tillage – or the value the soil is disturbed to plant seeds. When GPS technology became available, he used it to take soil samples to get an well-judged picture of the soil in specific locations. Now, nearly every piece of equipment on his sublet is equipped with precision ag technology. Innovation is now misogynist to ensure word-for-word seed placement, make precise applications of fertilizer and herbicide, monitor yields and guide tractors.
“By deploying technology, we can largest place the products we’re putting in the field so we can do increasingly with less,” Oswald said. “It’s like a killer app. Once you use it, you don’t want to quit.”
Farmers use a variety of technologies that work together to requite them detailed information well-nigh their soil and crops grown for supplies ingredients and unprepossessing feed, such as soybeans, corn and wheat.
“Automated guidance is matching to self-driving cars – at least for making parallel passes in the farmer’s field. Instantaneous sensors on yield harvesters measure yield, moisture, and quality characteristics every few seconds; and with GPS this data can be georeferenced into a map,” Dr. Griffin said.
That data is then used to determine the optimum plan for each precise location to grow crops using as few resources as possible.
“With knowledge of how soil nutrients vary spatially wideness the field, prescription of soil fertility amendments can be ripened to wield fertilizer at site-specific or variable rates wideness the field. In the last decade, sublet data has been a major consideration, expressly with respect to aggregating individual sublet data into communities of big data,” Dr. Griffin said.
How does precision ag modernize sustainability?
Precision threshing helps make farming increasingly sustainable in many ways. By precisely applying fertilizer, seed and yield protection products, these state-of-the-art technologies lessen the environmental impact of farming. Farmers can moreover tenancy their costs, which helps them to be economically viable so they can protract to farm. This moreover helps to alimony supplies financing affordable as it enables growing increasingly supplies while using less land.
Dr. Griffin said there have been some unexpected benefits, as well.
“When streamlined guidance was commercialized well-nigh 20 years ago, the technology seemed to have ubiquitous advantages for reducing overlap and permitting equipment operators to work spare hours in a day,” he said. “One of the greatest benefits was not measured with dollars but with satisfaction and improved quality-of-life from less fatigue. The less stressed equipment operator could translate into greater satisfaction of the unshortened rural household from improved social relations.”
Looking forward, Dr. Griffin expects increasingly automation to be involved in farming.
“In the past, tedious transmission tasks have been automated; in the future, increasingly ramified tasks that typically have required humans with wide skill sets will be automated,” he said. “The first steps have once been completed with data hodgepodge via sensors and transferring data to the cloud. Think of how self-driving cars have streamlined the task of navigating a rented street by replacing the human driver; then wield that type of technology to removing humans from the decision-making process.”
One day, precision farming might be combined with other advances, such as gene editing, to develop plants with disease or drought resistance, Oswald believes. Learn increasingly well-nigh gene editing in agriculture.
“I think gene editing has powerful potential for humankind in understanding and addressing issues through genetics,” he said. “Because it is a precise modification, plants could be made largest suited for the environment where they’re going to be growing. The next step could be a gene-edited yield that is planted in a specific part of the field.”
Farmers tenancy much of precision ag technology through their lamina phones.
“Mobile devices play a key role for each of the players in this system, and the importance of mobile devices is only increasing as precision threshing becomes the order of the day for 21st-century farmers,” Dr. Griffin said.
Farmers use precision threshing to wield the latest technology to help them grow unbearable supplies using fewer inputs and natural resources.
Developed with support of United Soybean Board.
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