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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.