Top Tech Innovations In Agriculture Most Farmers Utilize
It is no surprise that the agricultural industry is always looking for ways to improve the quality of their harvest. There are plenty of different innovations in agriculture, from drones helping them find disease in crops to robots picking fruit, so let’s explore some of these new technologies!
The agricultural industry has always been faced with issues like climate change and overpopulation, which means that they need to be innovative or risk losing ground. Here are some top tech innovations that farmers use today.
1) Calculators
This doesn’t seem like a big innovation, but it’s very important. Farmers use calculators to help them determine the rate of crop growth and how much they should water their fields. They also use calculators to figure out planting rates, so they can maximize yield, which ends up having a big impact on a farmer’s bottom line. Farmers use a corn yield estimator, which is an online tool that helps them figure out how much corn they should expect to grow. Besides that one, there are calculators for just about any crop.
2) Sensors and Imaging
Maintaining a farm is no easy task and even the slightest problems can destroy a harvest, take out an entire row of crops, or end up costing farmers thousands. In order to prevent this from happening, farmers rely on sensors and imaging to help them look at their crops without having to physically be there.
There’s a big push for drones that can help farmers look at their fields and see what needs to be fixed before it’s too late, but sometimes this is just not enough. For example, one of the biggest problems with corn is ‘lodging’, which means the stalk breaks down and the middle of the plant falls over. Farmers can use drones to take pictures of their fields, so they know when this is happening, but they still need to be on the ground with a shovel because sometimes there are other problems that will cause it.
3) Trackers and Sensors on Livestock
When livestock like cows and chickens are on a farm, keeping track of them is hard. Farmers need to know where they are in order to make sure they aren’t escaping or getting sick. In order to do this, farmers attach sensors that can help give the farmer an accurate track of where the animals are and help find them if they go missing.
4) Fruit Robots
Fruit picking does not have to be done by hand anymore, and many farmers are starting to use robots to pick their fruit. These robots will be able to go out into the field and pick crops within a matter of seconds. This means that the farmer can just spend all season planting, not worry about harvesting, then sit back during harvest time as his machine goes through the fields plucking fruit until it is just about ready to be picked.
5) Water Level Monitors
Water level monitors can help farmers determine where they need to plant their crops and how much water is available for them, which can cut down on irrigation costs. These monitors will measure the depth of a lake or other body of water, take that data into account from previous years, then give the farmer an idea as to how much he will have to irrigate his soil. These are especially important during times of drought to prevent crops from experiencing bad growth.
6) GPS and Automatic Tractors
GPS has been around for a long time and farmers have been using it since the 1990s, but now they are starting to take advantage of their tractors. Many farmers use GPS systems in their tractors so that they can plant quicker and more accurately. This means they get better production out of their machinery, and they get better yields.
7) Modern Greenhouses
Greenhouses are usually only built during the winter months, but there’s actually a new type of greenhouse that can be used all year round. Today’s greenhouses use high-tech insulation, which means that the heat stays inside the greenhouse while still letting light in for crops to grow. This allows farmers to keep producing throughout the entire year, even in winter. Modern greenhouses are helpful for farmers because they allow them to get more production out of their land, get more crops in a smaller space, and keep the soil fertile year-round.
8) Laser Scarecrows
Scarecrows are often used to keep birds out of fields or away from the crops themselves, but sometimes they are not enough. Farmers have started using laser scarecrows, which can repel more than just birds. The lasers are activated by an infrared detector that is set up around the field, so only when something moves will it be activated. This means the laser scarecrow can only scare away animals when they need to be, and the fields will not get ‘scared’ by a false alarm.
9) RFID
Finally, RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) tags are becoming more and more popular with farmers. An RFID tag is a tiny little computer chip that can be attached to the outside of a cow, for example, and can tell where it came from, what it has been exposed to, any medications given to the animal, etc. This will make sure that if there’s an outbreak of something, the farmer can easily determine which animals were exposed to it when.
Many farmers are starting to use technology and other innovative farming practices in order to get better quality harvests and increase their profits. Technologies that they use include GPS-activated laser scarecrows, water level monitors to determine where they should plant crops, fruit picking robots, modern greenhouses that stay warm inside while allowing in light for the plants to grow, sensors attached to cows and other animals, so farmers can tell when they get sick or go missing, and more. These technologies not only help them save money by saving the amount of water they need or letting them plant more crops in a smaller space, but it also helps them produce better crops by keeping their soil fertile and protecting animals from disease. We hope this article was informative and helpful.
