WORTHINGTON — Happy New Year everyone. My grandma used to tell me that as I aged time would go faster, it seems her theory may be correct. 2024 zipped right by and I am still trying to write 2024 on my checks half-way through the month of January.
There also is a theory out there called “forty chances.” This theory assumes a farmer gets 40 years to succeed and build his farm legacy.
Howard Graham Buffet stated it this way: “The whole concept behind ‘Forty Chances’ is really a mindset. If everybody thought they had to put themselves out of business in 40 years, you had 40 chances to succeed in what your primary goals are, you would probably be more urgent and you would be forced to change quicker.”
This article is about new agriculture technology. There has been a lot of change starting in vegetable production and those changes are creeping into all of agriculture production at a rapid pace. Most production methods today are trying to use Artificial Intelligence (known and stated as AI) to improve efficiencies and develop new programs to run and operate machines.
Agricultural robots, drones and machines are expected to play a key role in the future of farming, helping to increase food production, reduce waste and improve sustainability. Here are some examples in production today found on the internet and locally that not everyone is aware exists.
Spray drones were used in our area last summer to spray saturated fields and pastures that vehicles and tractors could not drive across. These drones use RTK technology to locate the property perimeter and then spray an entire field from border to border in a pattern style operation. Minnesota West actually acquired a drone in the ag department and uses the drone for education and training purposes.Mega robots in California strawberry fields use AI from laser and 3-D data provided by cameras and infrared images to detect fruit maturity and health. They use RTK global positioning to stay on the rows. Some of these robots are even charged with solar panels attached to the robot and can run the full day on the attached solar panels. The robots identify how the fruit hangs and the colors needed for maturity and then positions itself so the ripe berries can be picked robotically.Weeding robots in vegetable fields use manmade electrical lighting strikes to kill weeds identified with optic lenses. These robots are charged by solar panels as well.The autonomous tractor is hard for us in the Midwest to accept. Seeing a tractor driving down the road or in a field with no cab or driver just seems hard to comprehend. There are also autonomous combines and sprayers being developed on experimental farms today. They are run from an office computer and also have no cab or actual driver.Nissan has created a water robot that swims in the water and eliminates pest plant growth by mimicking the movement of a duck’s web feet in rice paddies.Farmbot robots can plant a variety of different seeds in a raised flowerbed. It can water plants by species needs, identify and weed out weeds from the vegetable bed and harvest a garden bed by each plant variety that it has planted. This requires zero effort for a fresh garden of numerous vegetables.Lely milking robots are actually present in this area and in full production use. The cows enter the machine on their own and the machine identifies each cow by its ear tag or ear chip and records daily health data on each individual cow as many times as the cow is milked each day. It washes the cow udder, applies the milker and milks the cows while it records the milk produced and the feed stuffs the cow ate in the milking stall while being milked.Iron ox indoor hydroponic robots are an indoor robot. In one year, they can produce the equivalent of 30 acres of vegetables outdoors on a one-acre indoor plot. It takes two robots to accomplish this feat. One moves the individual trays around in the facility while the other robot plants, weeds and harvests the produce both using AI as their source of programming and operations. These robots have advanced learning programs called on-the-go AI programming that detect fungus and insect pressure and eliminate the pests and fungus diseases with proper treatment of tillage, chemical or both, if needed.
These are just a few examples I found locally and with internet searches about robots, machines and drones that modern America is currently using to experiment and improve business operations.
What are some of the advantages of these new technologies? They can reduce labor, reduce operating costs and increase total product production due to mechanical errors being smaller than human errors. There is a downside to these new technologies as well. It’s not all instant profits and a golden road. Initial purchase costs are higher than normal equipment costs. There is a learning curve to operations and new training will be required.
Change is hard in any business, but with change comes progress. As we advance knowledge and technology with AI and experiences, there are bound to be improvements and increased efficiencies. Accepting potential changes is the first step toward new successes.
Economist Carl Jung is quoted in business articles, “We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.”
In my language that means you have to talk the change before you can walk the change. Another well know business economist, Andrew Ng, stated “We’re making this analogy that AI is the new electricity. Electricity transformed industries: agriculture, transportation, communication, manufacturing.”
If farmers truly only have 40 years to farm, why would anyone want to wait to become more efficient and effective? Wanting to improve in the new year should be a goal for all of us, but especially for those in farming and business who also have money investments on the line.
America is known worldwide for its abundant safe food supply, so next time you see a producer, thank them for what they do. Adapting new technology to farming won’t be easy in the next decade, but it will keep America abundant in safe food.