Agriculture and Technology

In ACM.   Good overview of the remarkable work underway and opportunities for Tech and agriculture

Technologizing Agriculture    By Keith Kirkpatrick 
Communications of the ACM, February 2019, Vol. 62 No. 2, Pages 14-16
10.1145/3297805

Agricultural businesses usually have a massive number of trackable assets (plants, livestock, and machinery), often operate in wide geographic areas in which these assets are located, and are subject to operational factors often beyond their control, such as the amount of sunlight or rainfall they receive, or temperature fluctuations. As such, agriculture is ripe for the adoption of new technologies to help monitor and manage assets on a granular level, and everything from Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, robots, and drones are being used by farms around the globe.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture notes that the farms of today are avid users of agriculture technologies such as robots, temperature and moisture sensors, aerial imaging, and GPS technology, which are more precise and efficient than humans alone, and allow for safer, more efficient, and more profitable operations.

One example of how technology enables new farming techniques is the use of robotic harvesting on indoor farms, which today account for a tiny fraction of the 900 million acres of traditional farmland in the U.S. However, these indoor farms are well suited to the growth of vegetables such as tomatoes, lettuce, and other leafy greens, are highly sustainable, generally feature an average yield per acre more than 10 times higher than that of outdoor farms, and represent a continuation of the agricultural sector's trend toward incorporating precision agriculture techniques to improve yields and become more sustainable.

"Whether it's indoor or outdoor farmers, finding technologies that drive efficiencies is a big deal for [farmers]," says Josh Lessing, co-founder of Root AI, a company developing a robotic platform that allows the inspection, analysis, and harvesting of leafy vine plants grown indoors, such as tomatoes. "[A lot] of work has been done specifically in precision agriculture. 'How do I reduce the amount of herbicide; how do I reduce the amount of pesticide?'" .... "