Article Summary:
Financial and economic stress is being faced by many farm families, and several of them are attempting to assess their potential to not just survive the current period of low prices and incomes, but to be operational, long-term participants in the agriculture of the future. This is a critical issue for many farm families. Will the business be positioned for long-run financial success after struggling through short-run financial stress and how can technology play a role?
To see if fertilizer rates are working, farmers use devices that are attached to their combines harvester that capture thousands of crop yield data points, yield is measured every three seconds and wheat protein every 10 seconds, which provides field-specific information important to the crop’s market value.
Furthermore, the devices can immediately create maps of the information, which farmers then use to adjust fertilizer rates for future harvests.
According to Sheppard the founding director of the Numerical Intelligent Systems Laboratory at Hopkins:
“With recent technological advances in remote sensing and precision variable application of things like nitrogen fertilizer, seeds and herbicides, it has become critically important to develop and apply the latest in intelligent computation and data analysis techniques to help farmers make the best decisions based on their valuable data,”
“All of this work is being done with an eye toward establishing economically optimal decisions for the farmers.”
“Ultimately, the goal of this research is to advance farm management decision making, as well as the state of the art in answering fundamental questions in artificial intelligence and machine learning.”
It is clear from above statements that future farmers are going to be way more intelligent people who can understand that they are producing data about their system.
These farmers will not relying much on outside information that is averaged over large areas across the state. The farmers of the future can understand how to run scenarios with simulation models that can be produced by giving the knowledge based on their systems.
They can pre-plan better managing strategies for a flash drought or extra moisture environment and can start to see the range of conditions.
INVESTEMENT EVALUATION
When it comes to farm management then evaluating the investment plan is one of the major concerns for many business person or farmers.
Most farms have limited experience managing strategies and limited understanding that computing can easily increment net farm income and financial performance.
Moreover, evaluating investments using capital budgeting tools (used to determine the economic feasibility of a capital investment) is one of the largest skill gaps in production agriculture.
Additionally, the importance of estimating potential new technologies, and the fact that this topic is typically not addressed by others providing training to farmers (i.e., farm business and agriculture management), extension has a role in improving this skill set.
UNDERSTANDING CROP’S DNA AND GENOME
Agricultural genomics uses technology to study and classify the genes of plants in order to develop new, specific varieties of crops. They are important because understanding genomics can reduce the trials and failures involved in scientific research to a certain extent.
This understanding can improve the quality and quantity of crop yields in agriculture.
Researching and understanding a crop’s DNA chain also means that breeding can be made more precise.
Additionally, farmers do not need to grow a plant to maturity to find out whether it will have the characteristics you want. A quick look at its genome beforehand will provide this information.
The inheritance strategy of plants involves the addition of a specific stretch of DNA into the plant’s genome, giving it new or different properties.
However, this could include altering the way the plant grows, or making it resistant to a particular disease. The new DNA becomes part of the plant’s genome which the seeds produced by these plants.
SMART TECHNOLOGY
The use of smart technology and computing tools in particular agricultural machineries, in farm management and crop production is more secure and modern way for handling the issues faced by many farmers around the world.
Moreover, tractors, combine harvesters, fertilizers, and sprayers, plays a vital role in the improvement of overall efficiency by reducing the cost of fuel, fertilizers, human labor, and parameters which can affect production competency and sustainability.
Furthermore, digitalization is the use of modernized agricultural machinery application and management policies using combined information and pre-data analytics approaches.
For instance, based on the European Agricultural Machinery Association, a digital farm machine should be able to assist and support drivers by sending and receiving data via sensors and computing tools. This information can enable the best and optimal use of machinery, and the technology should facilitate the automated operation of the devices.
The application of AI, big data analytics, and wireless and IoT technologies have led to significant changes in farm technology roles towards the development of autonomous systems.
Nowadays, with advancements in digital technology, the real-time visualization of smart farm equipment conditions is possible through digital approaches.
It allows contact to the system (e.g., machinery and robots), simulates the condition of the system, and monitors the behavior and operation as well as the maintenance situation of the machines.
CONCLUSION
To sum up, it’s a fact that each farm needs to evaluate whether it has the labour force in place to take full benefits of precision agriculture and automation technologies, or develop a plan to access these capabilities and skills.
Digital paradigms can be meaningfully utilized for soil and irrigation, crop, robots and farm machinery, and post-harvest food processing in the agricultural field.
Furthermore, it surely will support farmers to decrement the economic pressure on the agricultural sector and management issues, and help policy makers who are responsible for food security and environmental protection, towards strengthening the farm business management sector.
- The Dedicated Team of Pasture.io, 2022-09-06