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Andrew
Isaacson watches from a tractor in a corn field as screens show where
he has
fertilized at the Little Bohemia Creek farm on June 17, 2014 in Warwick,
Maryland (AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski)
|
Warwick
(United States) (AFP) - At Little Bohemia Creek Farm, the tractor pretty much
drives itself, weaving through rows of corn using GPS technology as it injects
carefully dosed amounts of fertilizer.
Farm
employee Andrew Isaacson sits in the cab -- his main job is to monitor computer
screens that control the vehicle and sprayer.
"I
just turn it around at each end," he says.
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A trench
made for injecting liquid fertilizer
is seen between rows of corn at the Little
Bohemia Creek farm June 17, 2014 in
Warwick, Maryland (AFP Photo/Brendan
Smialowski)
|
The farm on
Maryland's eastern shore is part of a growing "precision agriculture"
movement that uses high-tech tools to replace seat-of-the-pants farming.
GPS
auto-steered tractors cut down or eliminate overplowing and overlap that wastes
fuel and time. Other technologies can sense just how much water is needed in a
field to cut irrigation costs.
At Little
Bohemia Creek, the tractor's sensors gauge the health of various segments of a
field to deliver fertilizer and other chemicals more efficiently, which has an
environmental benefit.
"This
technology allows for more intricate data collection to make decisions,"
says Rich Wildman of the agricultural consulting firm Agrinetix, which provides
technology advice at the farm.
This
permits the farmer to "do more fertilization or seed planting to match the
needs of a field within an inch variation," he said.
Various
studies suggest farmers can save between 10 to 20 percent on fertilizer and
chemicals, while improving yields.
- Farming
in the cloud -
Little
Bohemia Creek owner Jon Quinn, 48, is using for the first time this year the
system called GreenSeeker, from California tech firm Trimble.
"I
don't know if I'm using less nitrogen, but I'm putting it in the right
place," Quinn explained.
If that holds
true, the fertilizer will mainly be absorbed by the corn instead of running off
into nearby rivers.
Paul Spies
of the Chester River Association, an environmental group, said Quinn is one of
a handful of farmers in the pilot project, which aims to show the benefits of
this technology.
"You're
asking farmers to alter what they have been doing for years," Spies said.
"They want to see proof that it will work."
Quinn also
participates in a "precision planting" project with Monsanto, using
data from his field to determine how seeds fare in different soil types.
"I
download it to my iPad, and it goes to the cloud so they can see it," he
said.
These
technologies mean farmers need to crunch big data.
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A sensor
that uses visible and invisible
light to judge crop health is used at the
Little Bohemia Creek farm on June 17,
2014 in Warwick, Maryland (AFP
Photo/
Brendan Smialowski)
|
Jess Lowenberg-DeBoer, a Purdue University agricultural economist, said that in the past 15 years, technologies such as GPS and auto-steering have become the norm in mechanized farming in the United States and other countries, from Australia to Kazakhstan to Sweden.
"The
economics are incredibly clear," he said. "You make gains either with
higher yield or lower costs, and sometimes with improved quality."
Purdue
researchers found more than 80 percent of US farm equipment being sold includes
these technologies, which would mean hundreds of thousands of farms.
For newer
technologies like soil and crop sensors, mapping and analytics,
Lowenberg-DeBoer said the picture is mixed, because specialized training is
needed to reap benefits. Just seven percent of US farm dealers offered
sensor-driven equipment in 2013, Purdue researchers found.
"It
will transform agriculture but it's not clear now exactly how it will do
it," he said.
- Bring in
the drones -
Also on the
horizon is the use of drones to provide real-time data to farmers to pinpoint
crop problems in time to fix them.
"We
can detect plant problems before they are detectable through the naked
eye," said Dennis Bowman, a University of Illinois crop specialist who
tests drones for farm use.
But drone
use is limited while US authorities study safety issues -- an issue clouded by
the more prominent drone applications for military and intelligence purposes.
"We
would like to see common sense rules that look at the situation in
agriculture," Bowman told AFP.
While corn
and other grains have been the main focus of precision agriculture,
Florida-based AgerPoint seeks to do the same for fruit trees and vineyards,
using laser scanning to give producers data on plant health, and early hints on
diseases and other problems.
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A sensor is
seen attached to a tractor
drawn liquid fertilizer applicator at the
Little
Bohemia Creek farm June 17,
2014 in Warwick, Maryland (AFP Photo/
Brendan
Smialowski)
|
The
advances mean farmers need to consider upgrading equipment like tractors and
combines, which give them real-time data to view on smartphones.
"They're
all skeptical at first," says Bryan Peterman, a sales manager at Atlantic
Tractor in Delaware.
"But
this is a generational issue. You have the younger generation who use
smartphones and iPads who are quick to use this. But we have to show the
farmers that it is user-friendly and that it saves money."
Dale
Blessing, who farms on several thousand acres in Milford, Delaware, said he
decided to add a harvesting combine with auto-steering which sends data to the
cloud and makes it available to him in real time.
"It's
just more efficient," he said. "You can make more with less."
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