Data analytics could increase agricultural productivity, sustainability

Screen Shot at PM
A remote sensing image indicates where there are water deficits in a farm field

Twenty years from now, the most important tool for putting food on your table won’t be a harvester, combine or a plow. It will be a piece of software.

. . . .

Simply put, the techniques that got us through the 20th century won’t get us very far into the 21st…

Fortunately, high-tech gadgets are spreading to farms across the country and nudging crop productivity upward.

. . . .

What gadgets do is unlock an unprecedented level of monitoring and data collection capabilities. But the heart of 21st-century agriculture will be the processing of these data….

Farmers face an array of questions when it comes to growing. What crop should be planted, and where, and when? How much water is needed? How much fertilizer is needed? … There are thousands of complex, interrelated variables involved in the process.

. . . .

Even before the farm’s first seed is planted in the ground, data analytics can be used to optimize the breeding of plant varieties to maximize the genetic potential for a variety of growing conditions…. Farmers in California might need a seed that tolerates drought, while a Midwestern farmer might want a seed with extra resistance to a particular plant disease.

The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: The tech that will feed the world

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