Crop Farming And New Technologies

Combining real-time monitoring and measuring technology with anytime intervention process control technology can generate significant benefits.

FREMONT, CA: Technology adoption in production agriculture is expected to accelerate in the next decade. The types of technology currently being adopted or likely to be adopted shortly are as follows.

Changes to Crop Agriculture: Crop farming around the world is experiencing a deep technological transition. Hence, production management is adopting increased micro-management of production activities by individual fields or locations driven by site-specific information. Regarding environmental, biological, and economic factors influence physical output, profitability, and soil and water quality.

Greater monitoring technology will expand the amount of data available regarding what affects plant growth and well-being. This will be made likely by innovations in sensors to utilize in monitoring and control systems, communication technologies, and data analytics.

Additionally, a greater understanding of how different growth and environmental factors interact is forthcoming. This knowledge will then be integrated into management systems to decide optimum combinations of inputs at or within a field level. Precision farming in crop production incorporates global positioning systems (GPS), yield monitors, and variable rate application technology to more precisely apply crop inputs to enrich growth, lower cost and lessen environmental degradation.

Cultivating crops with precision production practices might be called "biological manufacturing," which involves biotechnology and nutritional technology; monitoring, measuring, and information technology; and process control technology.

The crucial linchpin among these "technologies buckets" for successful execution is the data and information that can be continuously captured and utilized to manage the system and intervene in real-time to control and enhance the plant growth process.

The conversion of production agriculture from an industry that cultivates crops to one that biologically manufactures raw materials with specific attributes and characteristics for food and industrial use products is well underway. The discussion below will concentrate on three types of technology: biotechnology and nutritional technology; monitoring, measuring, and information technology; and process control technology.

Check Out This: Assembly and Testing

Biotechnology and Nutritional Technology: Biotechnology and nutritional technology manipulate plant production's growth, attribute development, and deterioration process. An enhanced scientific base impacts plant growth and attribute development and provides additional capacity to manipulate and control processes.

Furthermore, biotechnology is advancing our capacity to control and manipulate plant growth and development, including attribute composition (for instance, starch or amino acid composition) through genetic manipulation.

Combining nutritional and biotechnology notions with mechanical and other technologies to control or adapt the growth environment (temperature, humidity and moisture, pest and disease infestation, etc.). The process control approach and thinking part of the assembly line utilized in mechanical manufacturing evolves closer to reality in biological manufacturing.

Monitoring, Measuring, and Information Technology: This technology aims to trace the development and/or deterioration of attributes in the plant growth process and to measure the influence of controllable and uncontrollable variables impacting that growth process. In crop production, this technology includes global positioning systems (GPS), global information systems (GIS), yield monitors, weather monitoring and measuring systems, satellite or aerial photography and imagery, and plant &soil sensing systems.

In the coming years, in-plant sensors may detect growth rates and disease characteristics. These systems will be associated with growth models to discover ways to better plant growth performance and financial and physical accounting systems to monitor overall performance. In addition, computer technology to manipulate massive amounts of information is readily available; new monitoring and measuring technology, comprising near-infrared (NIR) and electromagnetic scanning, is now being developed to measure a broad spectrum of features of the plant growth process.

Process Control Technology: The idea of process control technology is to intervene with the proper adjustments or controls that will close the gap any time the actual performance of a process deviates from potential performance.

Greenhouse production increasingly uses such technology to manipulate sunlight, humidity, temperature, and other characteristics of the plant growth environment. Irrigation systems are an instance of this technology in field crop production; modern irrigation systems tied to weather stations and plant and soil sensors automatically turn irrigation systems on and off to ensure that moisture levels are sufficient for optimum growth.

Variable rate utilization of fertilizer and chemicals and row shut-off technology are examples of process control technology in rain-fed crop production. Another example is modern precision planter technology that automatically adjusts seed placement, depth, and soil coverage based on soil sensors.

Combining real-time monitoring and measuring technology with anytime intervention process control technology can generate significant benefits. Anytime intervention technology allows one to detect and solve a problem in real-time rather than anticipate a possible one. And preventively dispense control inputs that may be unnecessary (and thus costly) and possibly even damaging to the growth environment if that issue does not occur.

For instance, anytime intervention technology allows the detection of corn borers and the treatment of those borers. Once they meet an economic threshold, other than spending funds and utilizing materials in anticipation that a corn borer infestation might occur. This is unnecessary if the infestation does not reach an economic threshold during the growing season. An equivalent approach might be used to control weeds.

Similar approaches to fertility management may expedite lower levels of pre-season fertilizer applications by allowing extra applications during the increasing season as real-time sensing technology. For example, drop-down nozzle attachments for high-clearance equipment enable split fertilizer applications to be applied when needed.

Biotechnology may be less important to control certain insects or larger than necessary fertilizer applications to ensure the optimum yield if such technology is developed.

It would be unrealistic to await these process control and sensing technologies and procedures to be as prosperous as they have been in industrial manufacturing in lessening variability and systemizing the processes of producing manufactured goods like automobiles, computers, or even chemical and industrial goods. Still, it is also unrealistic to ignore the potential of these technologies in decreasing variability and obtaining more control over biological growth processes to increase efficiency, reduce costs, improve quality, and minimize environmental impacts.

Generally, biological-based attributes are more systematic for raw food, feed, fuel, and fiber materials. In essence, the concepts of biological manufacturing are all about using monitoring and measuring, biological and nutritional manipulation, and process control technologies to consistently manufacture food and industrial-use products.