Being a farmer is heavy work . sure enough , you get to expend all day alfresco , and there ’s that nice supplying of incredibly fresh and constitutional solid food at your fingertips . There ’s also the scissure - of - dayspring starting fourth dimension and 14 - hr days filled with hard forcible labour , ripe brute manure and delicate cow bag . luckily , technology is making its means down on the farm . It ’s also making the work of living off the land just a trivial bite easier .
Back in 1794,Eli Whitneysecured a patent of invention for his cotton gin , the rotatory machine that made First State - seeding ball of the fluffy , lily-white stuff a much more efficient process . In 2014 , modern inventors are increase farming efficiency and effectiveness with everything from GPS - equipped tractors and robot milkers to hand - held gadgets that quantify N level in soil [ sources : chronicle , van Vark ] .
Heigh - ho , the derry - o. The James Leonard Farmer ’s grow some Modern toys to play with on the dingle . While some of them may not have made it yet to the typical farm , most already have and others will , if pricing goes down .
10: Robotic Milking
If you ’ve evermilked a cowbefore , you may already know that yanking on udder is n’t much playfulness . It ’s also a clock time - centered process ( starting before morning ) that require several farmhands who could be performing other tasks . With good help so knockout to find , some farm owners are turning to robots to do their foul work .
Robotic milking place postulate just one person to feast and milk dozens of Bos taurus . These machines , which admit the cows to line up for milk when they select , do n’t only extract the white cream from their " users ; " they also monitor everything from milk output signal and number of milkings per daytime to the turn of steps that a cow take in a give sidereal day . ( A cow that spends most of its Clarence Shepard Day Jr. standing around is a cow in heat ) . astonishingly , cows take to the mechanical milkers very well , and they seem to like being milk as often as five or six times a day , as fight back to the usual human schedule of doubly per day [ author : McKinley ] .
9: Precision Soil Sampling
The AutoProbe may sound like a strange dick used by the same aliens who leave creepy-crawly craw circle in rural farm communities overnight . Or possibly it ’s that frigid metallic element object that haunting extraterrestrials used to go to townsfolk on the people of South Park in the classic sequence " The Stick of Truth . " In this lawsuit , however , the truth is that sodbuster use AutoProbes to take dozens ofsoil samplesin a matter of second [ source : Potter ] .
The car routinely digs about 6 inch ( 15 centimeter ) below the airfoil of a farm , hold samples while being pulled behind a tractor . No more hunting and pecking with a metal celestial pole . or else , raiser can take reproducible sample distribution with the help of GPS applied science and compare them from the same field over time [ reference : Potter ] . Soil sampling is very of import for Fannie Farmer as it give them information on what kind of nutrients theirsoilwill ask for maximum crop production .
8: Cloud Computing
Cloud computingisn’t just for post jockey and tech eccentric . Like every other business , land requires the folks running the show to have a good handle on all type of data . That includes inventory levels , equipment servicing schedules , weather shape and – of course – crop yields .
About 17 percent of farmers currently utilise cloud computer science tostore and percentage data , according to a 2014 Farm Journal survey . By storing the information on a distant server that ’s approachable via the Internet , these drug user can synchronize their data on various computers and other twist and take advantage of customized software program to get a more precise picture of exactly what ’s happening down in the fields [ source : Howard ] .
7: Nitrogen Sensors
Nitrogen is one of the key ingredients in any good craw fertilizer . The chemical substance heighten crop production for plant that take in the plant food , sue it and release it back into the air . The fuss is that nitrogen from fertiliser not taken up in the air can end up in groundwater . This not only bring to clime modification , but can also be harmful to fish and other marine liveliness . Too much N can also hurt the craw themselves [ source : Nolte , van Vark ] .
participate : GreenSeeker . The hand - held twist as well as the godsend - climb version let in an optical sensor that measures plant health so that farmers can usefertilizerefficiently . The detector sends explosion of red and infrared light to the crops and measures the light that the plants reflect back . The greater the light reading , the healthier the plant and the less pauperism for fertilizer [ sources : Trimble , van Vark ] .
6: Electronic Ear Tags
maintain tabs on ol' Bessie the cow receive a small bit easier with the advent of electronic auricle rag . fit out withradio absolute frequency identification(RFID ) check , the tags can communicate with antennas placed on feeding troughs so that farmers bed when – and how much – each of their cattle is eating . Changes in eating patterns are often a sign that something is wrong with a cow [ source : Coxworth ] .
Similarly , some cows have pedometers on their ankles to tip Farmer off as to how much metre they spend lounging or tolerate still , which – in addition to potentially being a sign that a moo-cow is in heat – can also indicate health issues . name and isolate problems like base - and - mouth or mad cow disease can have in mind the remainder between misplace one cow and losing a whole herd of cattle [ source : Coxworth ] .
5: Hybrid Planter
Proper farming is n’t just heavy work , it ’s also a workmanship . That includes making all kinds of decision about what to engraft and where to plant it . dissimilar fields are better befit for dissimilar types of seeds , even if they ’re grow the same type of crops . So - called " workhorse"hybrid seedsmay be necessary in more challenging environments , for example , while " bangtail " intercrossed seeds may help maximise output in good soil [ reference : Kinze Manufacturing ] .
placard as the first auto of its kind , Kinze Manufacturing ’s electric multi - intercrossed planter is intended to help farmers enjoy the best of both domain by giving them the ability to mechanically interchange the seeds they embed as the automobile locomote from one landing field to another . The technology use a single seed tube in purchase order to eliminate gap or singultus when transitioning from one seed eccentric to another [ source : Kinze Manufacturing ] .
4: The Irrigation App
One of the most important jobs of a farmer is to verify that he habituate the water he has judiciously ( especially if rain is not in the forecast ) . A fresh set ofsmartphoneapps call SmartIrrigation are place at serve cotton , strawberry and citrus tree farmers superintend the water they use on their crops by taking into account local weather conditions .
formulate by a University of Georgia agricultural scientist , the apps use GPS technology already uncommitted in smartphones to fix when users shouldwater their cropsby estimate how much H2O the plants are using each day and factoring in area rain totals , via connection with the closest weather station . It ’s not just for farmers : A home user variant lets lawn jockeys determine when to break out the sprinkler [ sources : Beckham , SmartIrrigation ] .
3: Drones
Talk about monotone , and a set of folk will probably assume that you ’re referring to the ones used to gather intelligence information and leave out bomb calorimeter on surmise terrorist in far - flung countries . For husbandman , however , the machine have the capacity to do as an crucial oculus in the sky . camera strapped to poke allow growers to closely monitor their crop , root out pests and ensure that their water is being used expeditiously . All that at a price ticket of less than $ 1,000 a pop [ source : Anderson ] .
Drones used in the agricultural context of use are commonly modest flying helicopters or quadcopters that can beautopiloted via GPSand are outfit with a point and shoot down television camera . Software , rather than a human operator , does the car pilotage , controls the camera and computer storage and class photos to give farm owners a detailed depiction of the state of their flora and alert them to patterns not seeable from the priming [ source : Anderson ] .
2: Driverless Tractor
Thedriverless caris an exciting new engineering science that could revolutionise life on the road . For some of us , it ’s also fabulously frightening . The approximation of traveling down highway at top speeds with no one behind the wheel is hard to wrap up our head around .
Farmers are ostensibly also feel a trivial flighty about let the machines do the drive on their Din Land . Those behind thetechnology , however , say that it ’s just one more invention that stands to make the oeuvre of planting and growing a whole lot easy . With this technology , the farmer operates onetractorwhich contact to others that could mime the first tractor ’s mode . Driverless tractor are a dear – in 2013 , they be more than $ 800,000 each – but they can work around the clock without a human operator and cover more precisely than most human- drive tractor . They also have the potential difference to admit older farmers to work after into their lives by allow the machine do the physically taxing business of driving a tractor [ informant : Espinoza ] .
1: GPS Steering
Farmers who are n’t yet ready to hand over the tractor key out to a political machine can still take reward of unexampled technology to make the most of their time behind the wheel . In the same way thatGPShelps drivers find the inadequate itinerary from points A to B , the mapping systems are being widely used to help husbandman succeed a straight melodic line when plowing their field for planting .
In a 2014 survey by British publication Farmers Weekly , growers cite GPS guidance as the top newfarm technologyin use , before of automatic milking machines and smartphones . It allows them to save time , energy , fertiliser and seed by ensuring that they do n’t cover the same area twice [ rootage : Griffiths ] .
Lots More Information
I ’m no farmer , but I was certainly glad to learn about all of the technological advances coming to the agricultural manufacture . You see – like any urban yuppie worth his salt – I want my food organic , I desire it fresh and I need it at the lowest possible cost . I also do n’t really need to wait in line for it . Here ’s hop that the push for efficiency finally makes its way to my local Fannie Farmer grocery store .
