Archived Content
Z-Trap 1 is an electronic insect trap allowing for remote monitoring of pest problems. The automated process of capturing and counting insects carries the potential for labor savings and greater accuracy of pesticide applications.
“Made in the U.S.A.” has never looked or felt so fine. The father-daughter team of Mark Yeager and Anna Brakefield is taking cotton from farm to table, except with a “seed to sheets” twist.
Look to the sky—research finds resistant pigweed spread by waterfowl
The latest and greatest technology isn’t always best
Randy Dowdy shattered soybean records in 2016 after a 171.7 bu. per acre yield with a UniSouth Genetics 74A74 variety. Dowdy’s corn was also exceptional, with four separate AgriGold varieties each significantly surpassing the 450 bu. per acre mark. Here’s how he did it.
A field of weeds can pay better than a field of corn, and costs almost nothing to produce. No inputs, no sweat equity, no management, no harvest, but plenty of profit in a scheme plucking millions from the pockets of U.S. taxpayers. Percy Carroll and a growing number of Texas farmers say a crop insurance racket is hiding in plain sight.
Despite a tepid forecast, cotton growers won’t “spit the bit” in 2017, particularly with no safe haven crop in sight, but rice producers may be in for a significant acreage dip.
What does it take to make a robot tractor? A batch of free software, some drone parts, a tablet computer, and one curious farmer to cobble the bits together. Matt Reimer’s remote control 7930 is proof in the dirt.
Harry Stephens is literally burning weed seed to save money and boost yield on his ground. Narrow windrow burning has arrived on U.S. farmland.
When a producer laces the gloves and climbs in the ring for soybean combat, a capable cornerman is vital.
With yields consistently bouncing above 100 bu. per acre, crop consultant Robb Dedman is among the best cornermen in the business. From 2013-16, Dedman eclipsed 100-plus bu. five times in four consecutive years in three separate Arkansas counties, with five different varieties.
Ducks are a hunter’s sweetest dream, but can be a farmer’s nightmare akin to flying time bombs expelling rapid-fire payloads of resistant weed seed. Wonder where the next pigweed outbreak will come from? Listen for quacks and honks, and look up. Waterfowl may be a significant source of resistant weed spread.
The first four-year precision agriculture degree program in the United States is set to kick off at South Dakota State University in September 2016.
A secret war is waged above farmland every night. In games of hide-and-seek between bats and crop pests, the bats always win, and the victories are worth billions of dollars to U.S. agriculture.
The big deer of Boone and Crockett tell a soybean tale. A proper soybean variety, served on a food plot plate, is a Cadillac protein source for deer. When deer walk into an Eagle Seed soybean plots, the kitchen is always open and stocked.
On many farming operations, mowing has given way to high-powered pre-emerges to kill vegetation, but bald ditches may spawn a regulatory leviathan. Silt gathering in the bottom of ditches and canals; eroded turn rows; washed out roads; and hammered PTO ditches are caught in a vicious spray cycle of unintended consequences with no simple fix.
Thumb-sized plastic beans, packed with a world of sensor circuitry, may soon be ready to monitor grain bins and storage facilities. Toss in a magic BeanIoT pod to check grain vitals. One bean to mind them all.
Timothy Gertson kicks up dirt off Texas’ Gulf Coast, southwest of Houston in Wharton County. He’s a young 31, but Gertson is an old-school farmer with no time for ideology and no wish to curb his options. Field decisions across his 2,000 acres at G5 Farms are dictated by dollars, and in 2016, he’s found a profit window in organic corn.
Think truffles are an agricultural sideshow? A billion dollars in demand says otherwise.
Guesswork and irrigation are long-time farming partners, but it can be a happy-in-hell marriage. When to turn on the spigot? How much water to deliver? Every farm soaks and dries in isolation because one field’s irrigation recipe is another’s death sentence.
Pirates are stealing billions during the exchange of U.S. agriculture goods, and pumping the wares right back onto American department store shelves. But CSI is ready to take on agriculture crime.
The single-row tractor is back and about to roll across a machinery graveyard. The first American-owned factory on Cuban soil in 55 years will manufacture single-row tractors.
The promise of precision agriculture to find the sweet spot between hardware and agronomics, under the banner of simplicity, hasn’t arrived.
Cooperation between agriculture and archaeology vital to preserve American Indian history