by Liz Ready
When we look at our plate, what do you see? If I had to guess,
you just see the food you’re about to consume, and depending on how hungry you
are, you may not see it at all. But when a producer looks at a plate of food,
they often see numbers; how long the product took to produce, how many
resources it took to produce or how much it yielded that year. It’s not often
we think like producers, but the data behind our food is incredibly fascinating
and requires the agriculture industry to become the ultimate shapeshifter,
constantly finding new ways to meet our consumption
needs.
Agriculture is the oldest industry in the planet. Some 23,000
years ago, a Middle Eastern village began planting and producing crops
strategically. In the 23,000 years that have passed, we have collected data
that has helped us become significantly better producers than our ancestors
ever had the chance of becoming.
Weather data and historical yield data were two of the first
metrics farmers to used to understand expected yields, and they are still used
today. Weather impacts soil and plant health immensely, which are the most
important factors in yielding a healthy crop. As we gathered centuries worth of
data, we now know exactly when to both plant and harvest crops to reach the
maximum yield potential.
Precision agriculture also helps producers be as
efficient as possible with the resources they have available to them. Precision
agriculture makes farming practices more accurate and controlled by using
technology like GPS guidance, robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, GPS-based
soil sampling and other intricate measuring softwares. There is arguably not a
single variable that goes unmeasured in agricultural production. The more data
producers can measure, the more efficient they can produce the food on our
plate. More importantly is efficient production means we’ll be able to feed
more people using the least amount of resources possible.
Simply put, data is the reason we have food on our plates. So
the next time you look at your meal, think about the producer who used data to
feed you.
Liz,
ReplyDeleteIn reading you blog I was very moved by the idea that we should start thinking more like producers and how they bring about the food that we have on our tables. A lot of people don't take inconsideration the hard work that has to be put into the food preparation to get from the fields to stores to their homes. It is a really long process. It first has to start in the fields by growing which could take anywhere from weeks to months depending on the food being grown. There is also a lot of factors that could potentially effect the crops that are being planted, so the fact that those crops stay alive is something people should be thanking producers for as well. It also takes a lot of business prepositions to get the crops into the stores and following FDA rules and then it takes even more work getting into to people homes. There is a lot of factors that come into play when looking at how producers use their data that they have acquired to perfect the system to get the food to your homes. I am super fascinated by the data that you have collected. For feedback, I would recommend that you include a case study that shows exactly how much work is actually put to perfect the system or what can go wrong: financially, emotionally, etc.
Sincerely,
Ray