These days, tractors are highly sophisticated as they come with several monitors that show a lot of details of farm, weather conditions and so on. These monitors show highly accurate information that makes farmers well informed on the environment and soil conditions to do farming more effectively. One screen will monitor the planting, the other will show accurate maps to make precise changes as the seeds go deep into the ground, and another one monitors the autoseteer.
There are self-driving tractors that go across the fields with the help of GPS signals that are accurate to even less than an inch of mistake. This is possible with the technologies that are meant to help the farmers do cropping successfully and accurately. The real potential of this is when the data from many tractors on many farms is gathered, combined and analyzed in the real time.
The established agriculture brands including DuPont, Monsanto and John Deere are now the data technology firms as they make seeds and equipment. GPS and other positioning system maker Trimble is also a big player in this space.
Agriculture is cautious to take on big data than the other industries. The start-up firms such as Farmers Business Network that counts Google Ventures as the investors have the collecting, combining and analyzing of the data from farms as their main business.
The sensors make everything possible in the modern farms as they show how effective the seeds are and types of fertilizers that are used. The software will guide the farmer to plant a hybrid in a corner and different seeds in another to get an optimum yield. This will adjust the levels of nitrogen and potassium in the soil in various patches. The details are fed to firms such as Monsanto to enhance the hybrids.
The big data firms test different seeds over several fields, climates and soils, and this is done based on the web search locations and analyzing the crops on the farms. This will have a big effect on the profitability. However, the big data is experienced a lot of skepticism.
There are farmers who are worried about the security as well as how the firms might use the data and increase their profitability. There is a slower adoption to the same as there is a contention on who owns and licenses the farmer’s data. There are savvy farmers who know that details about their performance and yields are incredibly precious.
Monsanto is pushing big data analytics across its business lines such as genetic engineering and climate prediction. It is persuading more farmers to adopt its cloud based services.
