#Precision agriculture moves farmers into the high tech age A variable rate irrigation system installed to water crops saves hundreds of thousands of gallons of water.
So, the The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has joined forces with America s beer brewers to change how farmer irrigate their crops.
For the nonprofit, conserving America s rivers meant growing America s barley, one of the primary ingredients in one of our favorite cold beverages
The key is precision farming: the convergence of digital technology that allows farmers to apply just the right amount of fertilizer and water on their fields.
Humans have practiced a rather crude form of agriculture for millennia: we douse fields to give them as much water
#In Idaho, the nonprofit is collaborating with Millercoors to support farmers who upgrade their irrigation systems to new precision agriculture systems.
and computer-controlled irrigation covering thousands of acres that conserve millions of gallons of water each day.#
Yet the central technology in this effortvariable rate irrigation (VRI) wasn t a commercial endeavor delivered directly to farmers clamoring for the technology.
Change in agriculture comes slow. Yet the promise of precision agriculture is to find the right mix of profit and environmental protection.#
#oewe are also seeing a changing of the guard, #writes TNC s manager of Idaho s Silver Creek Preserve.#
ultra-nutritious crops that would bring exotic produce to the supermarket and help to feed a hungry world.
the technology has bestowed most of its benefits on agribusiness#almost always through crops modified to withstand weed-killing chemicals
and spray less pesticide than they might have otherwise. At best such advances have been almost invisible to ordinary consumers,
who say that transgenic crops have concentrated power and profits in the hands of a few large corporations,
Some of these crops will tackle new problems from apples that stave off discoloration to Golden Rice
and bright-orange bananas fortified with nutrients to improve the diets of people in the poorest countries.
Other next-generation crops will be created using advanced genetic manipulation techniques that allow high-precision editing of the plant s own genome.
Such approaches could reduce the need to modify commercial crops with genes imported from other species#one of the practices that most disturbs critics of genetic modification.
Whatever promise these crops may show in the laboratory they will still have to demonstrate their benefits in painstaking, expensive and detailed field trials;
a soya bean equipped with a bacterial gene that allows it to tolerate a Monsanto-made glyphosphate herbicide known as Roundup.
This meant that farmers could kill off the majority of weeds with one herbicide rather than several,
a plant modified to produce a bacterial toxin that discourages destructive bollworms and cuts down on the need for pesticides.
At Rothamsted Research in Harpenden, UK, for example, scientists are working on GM plants that will need even less pesticide than Bt cotton,
Putting the genes for this defense into wheat has created a crop that could trick the insects into thinking that they are in peril and drive them away.
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#Manufacturers to reveal first bendable gadgets that will never break A prototype Samsung Windows smartphone.
could soon be seen in everything from Apple s much-rumured iwatch to larger tablets. The touted arrival this year of wearable gadgets such as computer displays strapped to wrists
said Kevin Morishige, a former engineer at Cisco, Hewlett-packard and Palm. LCD s dominance is already under threat from lighter Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDS) that don t need backlighting,
Corning s Willow Glass However, some manufacturers are already creating lighter and more flexible glass.
It is also now promoting Willow Glass which can be as thin as a sheet of paper
Initially, Willow will be used as a coating for products like solar panels, but it is expected eventually to create curved products.
Apple s iwatch concept A key selling point for Willow is more efficient production which involves so-called roll-to-roll manufacturing,
But the commercialization of Willow as a flexible product is some way off, James Clappin, who heads Corning s glass technology group
If their results can be replicated in other animals it could provide a way for virtually unlimited supplies of genetically superior farm animals or other animals important to research.
Shortly thereafter the first genetically identical cows chickens, and sheep were produced. What made Dolly a sensation,
however, was the method by which she was cloned. Whereas the mammalian clones before her were produced by splitting an embryo in a test tube
an udder cell taken from a 6-year-old sheep. The cloning method, called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), involves taking the genetic material from the adult cell
scientist have used SCNT to clone other mammals including cat, dog, deer, horse, mule, ox, rabbit and rat.
Repeatedly cloning cattle and cats went no further than the third generation. Frustrated scientists attempted to find out why successive cloning was progressively problematic.
the technique opens up the possibility of cloning highly-valued animals such as prized cattle or racehorses,
cows that produced humanized milk, evenolympic horses. Cloning remains a young science and scientists no doubt have a long list of organisms they would like to clone.
#New protein discovery could change biotech forever The quest started with trying to make better yogurt.
and interferon for multiple sclerosis and crops like Monsanto s Roundup Ready soybeans was based on relatively crude methods for inserting a gene from one organism into another.
#Originally, Phillipe Horvath and Rodolphe Barrangou, scientists at Danesco, now part of Dupont, were hoping to find a better way to make yogurt.
which would be useful in making yogurt and perhaps in manufacturing drugs. But he was quick to realize something else:
when scientists cloned a bucardo, an Iberian wild goat, that had gone extinct three years earlier, by inserting its DNA
(which they got from frozen bucardo skin) into the eggs of an existing goat. The cloned bucardo was born,
Three Possible Techniques Around the same time as the attempted revival of the bucardo in 2003, Robert Lanza, Chief Scientific Officer at Advanced Cell Technology, took tissue from a Javan banteng (not yet extinct),
and inserted it into an egg cell of a closely related cow. The cow gave birth to the exotic banteng,
which is still alive and thriving. Currently there are three semi-successful techniques being experimented with for de-extinction. 1.)Selective back-breeding of existing descendants to recreate a primordial ancestor is being used for the revival of the European Aurochs,
among others. 2.)Cloning with cells from cryopreserved tissue of a recently extinct animal can generate viable eggs.
only later to realize that elephant grazing itself was highly beneficial to thwart the encroachment of the desert.
limited supplies of cheap wood meant that split-rail fencing cost more than the land it enclosed.
transforming its grassland ecology as dramatically as the industrial quantities of corn and cattle being produced
and harvested within its newly enclosed pastures redefined the American diet. In Las Cruces, New mexico, Venue met with Dean M. Anderson, a USDA scientist
a relatively straightforward technological innovation#GPS-equipped free-range cows that can be nudged back within virtual bounds by ear-mounted stimulus-delivery devices#has implications that could profoundly reshape our relationships with domesticated animals,
Anderson s directional virtual fencing is augmented nothing less than reality for cattle, a bovine New Aesthetic:
the creation of a new layer of perceptual information that can redirect the movement of livestock across remote landscapes in real-time response to lines humans can no longer see.
If gathering cows on horseback gave rise to the cowboy narratives of the West, we might ask in this context,
and sheep laterality to the advantages of GPS imprecision and the possibility of high-tech herds bred to suit the topography of particular property.
whether it s elephants in Africa or Hereford cows in Las Cruces, New mexico. You will have seen this,
you might have your cows way over on the western perimeter of your land, while the rainfall takes place along the other Edge in two weeks,
Which means your cows are all in the wrong place. It s a lose-lose, rather than a win-win.
and program the polygon that contains your cows to move spatially and temporally over the landscape to this#oebetter location.#
and manpower to gather your cows, you would simply move the virtual fence. It s like those join-the-dots coloring books#you end up with a bunch of coordinates that you connect to build a fence.
which is something that is not currently possible in livestock grazing, even with all of the technologies that we have.
and you program cows to move on your ranch in Montana, and you don t have anybody out on the ground in Montana monitoring
and say,#oethe data saying that this number of cows should be in this polygon for this many days are accurate##or not.
How do you interface with the cow in order to stimulate the behavior that you want? Anderson:
what we know about cow hearing. Cows and humans are similar, but not identical. These cues were developed to fit the animal that we are trying to manage.
Now, if we go back to me as the example, I m very stubborn. I need a little higher level of irritation to change my behavior.
so we cut it right down for our version As the cow moves toward the virtual fence perimeter,
As the cow approaches a virtual fence boundary, we send the cues on the acute side,
If we tried to move the cow by cuing the obtuse side, she would have had to move deeper into the irritation gradient before being able to exit it.
the cow was observed standing near drinking water during this time. Anderson/#Virtual Fencing: Past, Present, and Future#)The key is,
when I put heart rate monitors on cows wearing my DVFDEVICES. I actually found more of a spike in their heart rates
Diagram showing two cows responding differently to the virtual boundary: Cow 4132 (in green) penetrates the boundary zone more deeply,
I m going to say#cows are, in fact smarter than human beings in a number of ways.
I had a Hereford/Angus cross cow, and she was a smart old girl. I started to cue her.
The US Forest Service over in Globe, Arizona, is interested in possibly using virtual fencing. Some of the mining companies over there have leases that say that before they extract the ore,
and even after, the surface may be leased to people with livestock. That country over there is pretty much like a bunch of Ws put together.
individual ranchers are pooling areas to form a grass bank for their common use. Anything that I can do in my profession to encourage flexibility,
You probably didn t see the article that I published last year on sheep laterality. laughter Twilley and Manaugh:
Our white-faced sheep, which have Rambouillet and Polypay genetics, were basically right-handed. You ll want to take a look at the data, of course,
but, basically, animals are no different than you and I. There are animals that have a preference to turn right
#I m curious as to how dynamic virtual fencing affects how cows perceive the landscape. Anderson:
cattle would still not cross the line where it had been located. So this could indeed be an issue with virtual fencing,
Part of the reason is that cows want to eat, so if the polygon that contains the animals is programmed to move toward good forage,
the cows will follow. It s almost like a moving feed bunk, if you will. I m sure that, in time#I would almost bet money on this#that
but are we missing some of the other ways that virtual fencing might transform the way we manage livestock or the land?
One day when I was out manually gathering my cows on an ATV I put a voice-activated recorder in my pocket
The cows moved to the corral based on the cue without me actually being present to manually gather them#it was an autonomous gather.
I think this type of thing also points to a paradigm shift in how we manage livestock.
Why not try to manage on cow time, rather than our own egotistical needs##oeat eight o clock,
I want these cows in so I can brand them,#or whatever. Why not mesh management routines with their innate behaviors instead?
http://www. lopezlibrary. org/music. html Libraryfarm#orthern Onondaga (N y.)Public library#oethe Libraryfarm is an organic community garden on one-half acre of land owned by Northern
and Herb garden Mixology as well as many other unusual events.#(#Sacramento Public library, Sacramento, CA) Haunted history tour:#
##oemaggie the milking cow is the focus of the room and is milked hundreds of times every day by children and adults.
Everyone has fun learning about dairy products and then trying their hand at milking Maggie the cow.
Maggie will be on display in the children s department until November, when we will change the Early Learning Center exhibit to a new theme with new fun interactive learning opportunities.#(
River Forest Public library in River Forest, Illinois) Kansas Hog-butchering demonstration (Central Resource Library, Overland Park, KS)# entioned in a recent Wall street journal article
We provide the coffee & donuts and show a movie. The movies range from older classics to comedy to adventure to newer releases.
#Boyle County Public library Laurel County Public library: Vintage dancers Trapping and hunting Mah-jongg#oewhisk Me Away#cooking series Creepy Foods for Halloween World Religion Discussion Series Holocaust Discussion Series Adult Pottery Class
Mad about Mushrooms Soapmaking Introduction to Cake Decorating#oehow to Cook Wild Game#series with Fish & Wildlife agency#Spencer County Public library Carroll County Public library:
Heirloom poultry breeders#who bring their flocks with them! Beekeeping for hobby & profit Anderson County Public library:
Seed lending library Reading camp for struggling first grade readers ipad and e-Reader/Kindle classes Civil war re-enactment bivouac on back lawn, Dessert contest, scarecrow
making contest, Classes on making wreaths, walking sticks, vegetable gardens, butterfly gardens, native plants and hypertufa Madison County Public library::
Chefs used fresh local tomatoes, as well as other ingredients of the season. Chinese New Year#Partnership with high school and Chinese Language school, activities include Chinese paper-folding, painting,
This includes a greater emphasis on urban agriculture such as vertical farming which, properly designed and planned, could provide the sustainable means to improve food supply we need.
Ideally, urban agriculture fits neatly alongside or within existing buildings in a self-contained and sustainable manner without competing for resources.
They can use greenhouses in order to take advantage of the sun s energy, or grow indoors with the help of artificial lights.
Vertical farming is promising because it requires no soil, and can save space and energy and improve crop yield.
It takes advantage of the vertical space of city buildings rather than turning over wide expanses of land to agriculture and uses advanced greenhouse technology:
hydroponics or aeroponics, and environmental controls that regulate temperature, humidity and light to produce vegetables, fruits and other crops year-round.
In large cities such as New york, Chicago, Tokyo and Singapore, these ideas are taking root. Singapore has taken local urban farming to a high level Skygreens has built the world s first commercial vertical farm in large three-story greenhouses, providing a sustainable source
of fresh vegetables. The cost of growing Vertical farming s biggest limitation is energy consumption. Considerable energy is required to power a closed, indoor greenhouse facility s artificial lighting, heating and cooling
and hydroponic or aeroponic growing systems. The amount of energy required per unit of product is an important factor for ensuring
not only that the farm is sustainable, but that it is economically viable. Recently, more and more studies have focused on pairing solar panels
and wind turbines with greenhouses to provide self-generated renewable electricity on-site. But the single technology that will be key to making vertical farms possible is lighting.
New LED light technology is the key that makes it possible to build vertically integrated farms.
There is potential for these multifunctional techno-greenhouses built around LED grow lights to increase the quality of the food we eat
or pea-sized water pellets would work best. Should the water beeaten like tiny liquid snacks that could be popped into your mouth at any time?
Perhaps we would want flavored water like cherry water, tea water, coffee water, or chocolate water.
and much more. 2. Water Harvesting Irrigation Spikes Will it someday be possible to add atmospheric water harvesting ground-spikes next to every plant or tree in our garden?
or swarms of bees have become known as swarmbots. How long will it be before we see the newspaper headline that reads:
as young people abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. Do we have a moral obligation to begin archiving our languages in a central repository as a way to preserve our cultures,
#Top 15 emerging agriculture technologies that will change the world Automation will help agriculture via large-scale robotic and microrobots.
Sensors help agriculture by enabling real-time traceability and diagnosis of crop, livestock and farm machine states.
and potentially from producing meat directly in a lab. Automation will help agriculture via large-scale robotic
and maintain crops at the plant level. Engineering involves technologies that extend the reach of agriculture to new means, new places and new areas of the economy.
Of particular interest will be synthetic biology, which allows efficiently reprogramming unicellular life to make fuels, byproducts accessible from organic chemistry and smart devices.
Fundamental additions to the automated farm, these sensors would enable a real time understanding of current farm, forest or body of water conditions.
Livestock biometrics: Collars with GPS, RFID and biometrics can automatically identify and relay vital information about the livestock in real time.
Scientifically viable in 2017; mainstream and financially viable in 2020. Crop sensors: Instead of prescribing field fertilization before application,
Building on existing geolocation technologies, future swath control could save on seed, minerals, fertilizer and herbicides by reducing overlapping inputs.
Also known as agbots, these are used to automate agricultural processes, such as harvesting, fruit picking, ploughing, soil maintenance, weeding,
planting, irrigation, etc. Scientifically viable in 2018; mainstream in 2020; and financially viable in 2021.
Precision agriculture: Farming management based on observing (and responding to) intra-field variations. With satellite imagery and advanced sensors, farmers can optimize returns on inputs while preserving resources at ever larger scales.
predict, cultivate and extract crops from the land with practically no human intervention. Small-scale implementations are already on the horizon.
Vertical farming: A natural extension of urban agriculture, vertical farms would cultivate plant or animal life within dedicated
or mixed-use skyscrapers in urban settings. Using techniques similar to glass houses, vertical farms could augment natural light using energy-efficient lighting.
including year-round crop production, protection from weather, support urban food autonomy and reduced transport costs. Scientifically viable in 2023;
Concord, Calif. 122,683 118 Erie, Pa. 101,454 117 Milwaukee 594,328 117 Toledo, Ohio 287,487 117 Newark 276,478 116 Orange, Calif
, Ill. 152,948 100 Columbia, Md. 100,735 99 Miami Gardens, Fla. 107,884 99 Garden Grove, Calif. 171,377 98 Salinas, Calif. 150,634
Kansas 125,902 89 Arvada, Colo. 106,965 88 Downey, Calif. 111,807 88 Pembroke Pines, Fla. 155,578 88 Torrance, Calif. 145,443 88
77 Palm Bay, Fla. 102,814 77 Port St. Lucie, Fla. 163,748 77 Palmdale, Calif. 151,841 75 Victorville, Calif. 115,069 73
. 101,339 68 Thousand Oaks, Calif. 126,570 68 Elk Grove, Calif. 151,639 67 Frisco, Texas 116,944 61 Naperville, Ill. 142,143 56
enjoy coffee from free Starbucks dispensers and Coke machines rigged to dispense drinks for 25 cents.
As a young graduate student, Everett was studying one of the hottest innovations of the dayhybrid corn seed.
and built for the Google or Apple executive. The Apple headquarters boast more Teslas than a Tesla showroom.
Early buyers were not price-sensitive and placed a premium on service and design. Tesla identified their innovator customer segment
When early adopters around the world see Apple and Google executives driving a Tesla, they want to be the first in their city
But the diffusion of innovations theory ultimately explains adoption of hybrid corn seed, why Elon musk first entered the electric car market by focusing on luxury cars,
#The future of drones expected to transform agriculture 80%of the commercial market for drones will eventually be for agricultural uses.
That s because agriculture operations span large distances and are mostly free of privacy and safety concerns that have dogged the use of these aerial high-fliers in more heavily populated areas.
and nearly half a billion in tax revenue to be generated collectively by 2025, much of it from agriculture.
Iowa, the country s largest corn and second-biggest soybean grower, could see 1, 200 more jobs and an economic impact topping $950 million in the next decade.
the applications in agriculture, said Kevin Price, a former professor at Kansas State who left the university this month to join Roboflight,
and analyzes the data collected on corn, soybean and other field crops. Farmersare going to be able to see things
and monitor their crops in ways they never have before. In the next 10 years almost every farm will be using it.
Today, satellites, manned planes and walking the field are the main ways farmers monitor their crops.
watering issues, assessing crop yields or tracking down cattle that have wandered off help farmers recover the investment, often within a year.
Farmers also can use drones to tailor their use of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizer and other applications based on how much is needed at a specific point in a field a process known as precision agriculture saving the grower money from unnecessarily overusing resources
while at the same time reducing the amount of runoff that could flow into nearby rivers and streams.
Brent Johnson a corn and soybean farmer in Calhoun County in central Iowa, purchased a drone in 2013 for $30, 000 that is already paying dividends on his 900-acre farm.
He s used the aircraft, which covers about 80 acres an hour, to study how yields on his property are affected by changes in topography.
And last growing season he identified some areas where his corn stands were not strong enough,
when to sell his crops. I m always looking for an advantage looking for how I can do said things better
who also owns a precision agriculture company. While some farmers could join Johnson and buy their own drones,
Still, he said for drones to have a meaningful and long-lasting impact in agriculture, they need to be retrofitted with additional devices to collect more information such as thermal sensors to identify early signs of plant stress that can later be parsed,
there is some uncertainty over how much flexibility the federal government has given really agriculture to use the aircraft.
Drones are being used for agriculture in a slew of countries including Canada, Australia, Japan and Brazil.
Future Agriculture When people think of farming they typically conjure up images of a tractor cresting a hill billowing large plumes of exhaust into the air.
As with all industries, there are many micro-forces driving the changes in future agriculture. But there are three dominant trend lines precision, relevance,
Plant-Jackers and Tree-Jackers Plant and tree alteration specialists, who manipulate growth patterns, create grow-to-fit wood products, color-changing leaves, personalized fruit, etc. 129.
Molecular Gastronomists 130. Bio-Meat Factory Engineers 131. Supply Chain Optimizers 132. Urban Agriculturalists Why ship food all the way around the world when it can be grown next door 133.
Clone Ranchers Raisingblank humans will be similar in many respects to cattle ranching. But once a clone is selected,
Final Thoughts In much the same way that the 1985 Apple Laserwriter gave birth to desktop publishing,
and ranching operation is looking out on a deep green field of sunflower vetch corn clover buckwheat savannah grass and other crops.
Brown is among a growing number of farmers who use a suite of techniques to build soil's natural capacity to retain moisture discourage weeds and pests and nurture crops.
The change is due to several key farming practices including cover cropping and no-till farming
No-till farming means that instead of plowing-under that rich soil ecosystem every planting season Brown plants directly onto the stubble of last year's crops.
According to USDA data farmers who used no-till methods on corn in 2010 were 30 percent less likely to receive an indemnity payment from the FCIP than conventional farmers.
No-till farming according to NRDC's analysis could have saved potentially the FCIP $223 million in payouts in 2010 alone.
Cover crops aren't grown for market. They're chosen for their ability to protect and enhance soil health.
Planting a mix of cover crops like winter wheat and hairy vetch increases soil nutrients and water retention and prepares the soil for the next planting rather than depleting it.
A recent USDA survey found that farmers who used cover crops in 2012 averaged higher yields than farmers who did not.
The benefit was pronounced most in areas hardest hit by drought demonstrating what a powerful drought-proofing tool cover-cropping can be.
Reaping the Benefits of Cover crops (Op-Ed) Using techniques that protect and improve soil health provides a built-in buffer against weather extremes
Instead it encourages profits for risky planting such as repeatedly planting corn or growing crops on marginal land that requires heavy use of chemical fertilizers that depletes soil health.
The nation can't afford to put our farmland or our farmers not to mention taxpayers at risk by not protecting farms from extreme weather.
I help manage a coffee farm and our yields as well as world prices can vary as much as 30 percent or more from year to year.
The FCIP can help farmers transition to less risky farming by becoming a true risk-management policy instead of a crutch.
(and can according to existing law) offer lower rates to farmers who embrace low-risk water-smart practices like cover cropping no-till farming and more efficient irrigation.
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