Smart Farming Week: March 10 - 16, 2025
Farm Journal’s Smart Farming Week is an annual week-long emphasis on innovation in agriculture. The goal is to encourage you to explore and prioritize the technology, tools and practices that will help you farm smarter.
From drones and data to sensors and science, Smart Farming is a persistent management strategy that empowers farmers to collect, visualize and confidently act upon relevant insights. In turn, farmers can optimize efficiency and resources despite environmental uncertainties and remain resilient in the production of food, feed and fiber.
If weather stresses have you looking for ways to give your crop a stronger start this spring, consider whether a plant growth regulator could be part of the solution, especially in high-yield environments.
Being in control of your data means having full access. Do you receive a digital file of all field activity by a third party? Now’s the time to have a conversion with your ag retailer about data delivery back to you.
Planter technology once focused on acres per day, but plant spacing and uniformity have moved to the forefront and there’s been an explosion of technology to help manage the furrow. Smart investments will maximize corn yield on every soil type.
Rick Rice, AMVAC director of application technology, says grant programs aren’t meant to forever subsidize a particular practice, but instead act as a catalyst for new participants to see its benefits.
“It’s in these challenging markets farmers need to think about driving more efficiency using technology,” says Darryl Matthews, a recently retired tech executive. Certain technologies can provide a short-term ROI.
“Smart farming means making your life more efficient, so you don’t have to focus on the mundane but instead on making the best product possible,” says Nebraska farmer Lukas Fricke. “We only have so many hours in a day.”
Farm Journal Test Plot research proves practices that reduce soil disturbance and sequester carbon perform best in a vertical farming system, as opposed to horizontal tillage, which creates yield-limiting soil layers.
Two new studies from Locus Ag and Pivot Bio found the use of biological products consistently increased yields in a variety of crops across a range of growing conditions.
Biome Makers said it pairs artificial intelligence with its soil database to decode soil biology and provide growers with more actionable information.
From 2020 with only a few farmers participating to covering millions of acres in 2023, Taranis says it wants to help retailers and farmers understand every decision with analytics via its AcreForward technologies.