Technology in agriculture: How does it benefit me?
technology in agriculture
07-16-2019 By Adriana Calvo.
Since agriculture began thousands of years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, technical advances have been constant. Technology goes hand in hand with agriculture, since the farmer has always tried to facilitate the hard work involved in the field. From the moldboard plow to tractors connected via satellite to your mobile phone, technology in agriculture means advances and improvements in the efficiency of your farm.
Contents [hide]
1 What we understand by technology in agriculture
2 What is the cost of taking advantage of technology in agriculture
3 Benefits of applying technology in agriculture
What we understand by technology in agriculture
We can define technology in agriculture as any tool that represents an advance in the working model and improves the efficiency of a farm. Although we hardly perceive it, many of the activities and tasks that are carried out in a day's work in the field involve the use of technology.
In the field, technology must meet three goals:
Facilitate, or directly carry out, the work of farmers.
Increase crop yields.
Save on production inputs.
The idea is to be able to carry out agricultural work with the minimum possible time and personnel. For example, think about the breakthrough the tractor made. The use of the machine implied a substantial improvement in work efficiency compared to animal traction. Today, the most powerful tractors allow a job to be done in much less time than the first ones that were invented.
Farmers are aware of the advantages that technology offers in agriculture, so the vast majority want to use the most up-to-date and advanced possible. In these times, the technification of the field has reached such a point that we are already talking about smart agro, agrotech or Agricultural Technology - all concepts that we can summarize as precision agriculture. In other words, computing at the service of agriculture.
Perhaps you relate the term to the use of drones to obtain high resolution images of crops that help you estimate fertilization needs, or GPS navigation to harvest without the need to drive the tractor. But it goes much further. It is a digital revolution that also reaches the field and leaves us to solve a few challenges. Challenges that have to do with the agricultural and food sector and some very ambitious goals related to this overpopulated, globalized planet in which resources are clearly finite.
What is the cost of taking advantage of technology in agriculture
Technology must help optimize the profitability of a farm, so it must be economical. Only then will it be worth implementing. For example, a machine that is used to collect olives from an olive farm should cost less than that of doing the harvest manually. This must be assessed in each case.
The digitization of the field allows to increase the yields of a farm and reduce inputs. Applying precision agriculture to crops has the result of better preparing the soil, providing the plants with only the necessary nutrients, the exact pesticides to fight pests and diseases that affect them, and better distributing inputs in the field. Again, if a technology is going to bring a benefit to the farmer, its price cannot be higher than the benefit it entails. For example, a fungicide for a wheat crop that allows to harvest 10% more, cannot exceed, per hectare, the value of 10% of the harvest obtained.
Benefits of applying technology in agriculture
As we have seen, precision agriculture, thanks to technology, allows farmers to save costs. Thanks to advances, it is no longer necessary to apply water, fertilizers and pesticides uniformly throughout the farm, with the associated cost. Instead, technology makes it possible to apply the minimum amounts required and do it in specific areas, really those that need it.
One of the great benefits, for the farmer, of the use of any type of agricultural technology is the saving of time. Whether you use a plow or a drone, both tools allow you to perform tasks in much less time than if you did not have them. Herein lies one of the keys to technology. Thinking about this factor, the management software has been created. They make it easy to organize paperwork. For example, digitizing the field notebook, noting the costs of the work carried out, etc. Having all the information related to the plots on a mobile device, among other things, will save you a lot of work at the end of the campaign.
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