Agriculture took root nearly 12,000 years ago, and the advancement of the industry’s technologies and processes has and continues to make a big impact on the world. Today the agriculture industry is faced with the serious issue of trying to feed the world's growing population. The resolution? Smart Farming. The agriculture industry needs to get on board with the idea of Smart Farming in order to stay relevant and innovative, and it can do so by harnessing big data.
Before we delve deep into the details and benefits of Smart Farming we must first understand what it's based on: big data.
Data in itself isn’t a new invention. Before computers and databases came along, there were paper records and archive files. People would look at this data to find trends and insights and could use it to make advancements. In a nutshell, big data simply refers to the same kind of information but on a larger scale pulling information from the internet and anything digital. From this data, we can find trends and form insights on almost anything on a larger scale with all the access to the internet from anywhere in the world. In his book, Everybody Lies, data scientist Seth Steven-Davidowitz describes four powers of Big Data:
1. Offers up new types of data
2. Provides honest data
3. Can zoom in on small subsets of people
4. Causal experiments
These four powers can apply to every aspect of the agriculture industry. We did not always have mass scale knowledge on people’s views of sustainable farming practices, food products that people are truly interested in or farm management techniques. With big data we do, and it has already begun to take a hold in the agriculture industry, much of it in the processes.
John Deere is just one of the major farm and tractor companies that has sensors on their farming machines to collect information and data. This information is collected on a mass scale and helps farmers determine which crop varieties to grow, where they do and don’t need to spray certain pesticides, fertilizer and crop adjustments based on their soil, monitor livestock comfort and health, and more.
So, new technology and big data is not something the industry needs to be afraid of, but rather something to tackle head on and use it to its advantage. Farmers can now use data and technology to help them farm ‘smarter’ in ways that can sustain both the earth and the world's growing population. Big data has significant potential to provide insights across all aspects of the agriculture industry including sustainability issues, consumer support, farm management, and consumer demand.
By: Megan Engel
Steven-Davidorwitz, Seth. (2017) Everybody Lies. Broadway, New York:HarperCollins Publishers.
The Development of Agriculture. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/development-of-agriculture/
What is Smart Farming? (n.d.) Retrieved from https://www.smart-akis.com/index.php/network/what-is-smart-farming/
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