Between 2007 and 2012, the number of farms in the U.S. decreased as their average size increased, indicating further erosion of the small family farm market share in relation to Big Ag and conglomerates.
It’s increasingly difficult for small family farmers to make money or shape farm policy in an environment where Big Ag rules. Yet many believe these small family farms are the backbone of our nation. People concerned with our world food supply and the environment look to small family farms as an important part of our future. How do we keep them viable? How do you keep your farm in the family?
Part of the sustainability answer is precision agriculture, a technology that serves the interests of those who want to preserve the planet, those concerned with food for 9 billion people who will inhabit it in 2050, and small family farmers who want to stay on the farm and make a living doing it. Imagine knowing exactly how much fertilizer you need and when and where to apply it or exactly how much water you need on which plants. No waste. No wrong guesses.
While precision agriculture in several countries serves sustainability, preserving environmental resources, in the U.S., the first country to develop the technology in the early 1980s, implementation is primarily associated “with mainstream farmers who are trying to maximize profits by spending money only in areas that require fertilizer.”
Let’s take a closer look at precision agriculture (PA).
What is it? Precision agriculture, also called satellite farming or site specific crop management (SSCM), is a farming management concept that involves observing, measuring and responding to variability in crops between fields and within a field.
The concept depends on two important technologies, GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System), with the U.S. version, GPS (Global Positioning System) and Big Data, the information we swim in every day. A farmer’s ability to locate a precise position in a field and gather and analyze information like crop yield, terrain features/topography, organic matter content, moisture levels, nitrogen levels, pH, EC, Mg and K enhances their ability to conserve resources.
Observing and Measuring. Data come from many sources, including, of course, just taking a look and recording information. In the technology-based PA world, though, it is more likely to come from something like crop yield monitors mounted on GPS equipped combine harvesters and real-time vehicle mountable sensors. Drones flying over fields take in data, and satellite images provide data. And then we have the whole developing world of IoT (Internet of Things).
Responding. Data from many sources become part of Big Data, which develops software to analyze and report on it, to make it useful. “Challenges include analysis, capture, data curation, search, sharing, storage, transfer, visualization, querying, updating and information privacy.” Among the growing arsenal of tools for response are variable-rate technology (VRT) agricultural equipment, for example varying seed density along with variable-rate application (VRA) of nitrogen and plant disease control products.
Is precision agriculture new? No, just more efficient every day. Since the dawn of agriculture, human beings used their ingenuity to find the best way, the most efficient and effective way, to grow food. In places and times where it was harder to access resources, people tended toward conservation. Why would they waste the precious seed? But the process accelerated with technology developments in the early 1980s. Now it seems a new must-have aid to precision agriculture hits the market every day.
What does PA mean for small family farms? If you’re a small family farmer, you’re probably wondering how all this expensive technology can possibly mean anything to you? Yet one of the most exciting features of precision agriculture is Big Tech and Big Ag making technologies available to smaller farmers with techniques like subscriptions and data sharing.
PrecisionAg.com provides a list of 15 companies to watch for innovation. Several of these make technology available to small farmers:
- Farmobile (Overland Park, KS) – Makes big data management simple for farmers, producing reports on iPads.
- Granular (San Francisco, CA) – Connects Big Data developers from California with farmers in Midwest.
- iCropTrak (Tucson, AZ) – Brings offline computing power of immense proportions to the iPad plus its new FarmEngine, an in-hand crop consultant.
Bringing this technology to small farmers in the U.S. or to farmers in the developing world, showing them how to maximize their own resources, produce their own food, provide food to others and contribute to sustainability, their own and the world’s, is a key to a more cooperative world, perhaps one of the greatest things we can achieve and a key to keeping your farm in the family.
For more tips on ways to keep your farm in the family or to share your story, please contact us.
