Farming's brave new face.It's a hot, dry night. A farmer wonders if his wheat crop needs watering. But it's a 10-mile drive away, and he can't expend all that time and gasoline every time his crop might need attention. So he goes on the Internet to find out the precise weather conditions affecting his plants. If the field is indeed too dry, he can remotely activate the irrigation irrigation, in agriculture, artificial watering of the land. Although used chiefly in regions with annual rainfall of less than 20 in. (51 cm), it is also used in wetter areas to grow certain crops, e.g., rice. system. The wheat field is lined with poles spaced 20 to 60 feet apart, each with tiny sensors that measure temperature, air humidity, wind speed and direction. The poles are attached to a cell phone that sends readings to the Internet every 15 minutes, allowing them to be checked online. The computer can also be programmed to automatically irrigate ir·ri·gate v. To wash out a cavity or wound with a fluid. the field whenever it gets dry enough, or apply pesticides in specific places. Welcome to the world of precision agriculture. This brave new field "benefits from the emergence and convergence of several technologies, including geographic information systems (GIS), automated machine guidance, infield and remote sensing Deriving digital models of an area on the earth. Using special cameras from airplanes or satellites, either the sun's reflections or the earth's temperature is turned into digital maps of the area. , mobile computing Using a computing device while in transit. Mobile computing implies wireless transmission, but wireless transmission does not necessarily imply mobile computing. Fixed wireless applications use satellites, radio systems and lasers to transmit between permanent objects such as buildings , telecommunications and advanced information processing" according to GPS World magazine. Global positioning systems (GPS), which provide highly accurate geo-spatial information, are one of precision agriculture's key technologies. The list of corporations involved in precision agriculture includes farm equipment manufacturers, agrochemical agrochemical Any chemical used in agriculture, including chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides. Most are mixtures of two or more chemicals; active ingredients provide the desired effects, and inert ingredients stabilize or preserve the active ingredients or aid companies, pharmaceutical/biotech companies, information brokering/data management firms, and even high-tech Pentagon and intelligence community contractors. Some organic farming advocates and environmentalists remain unimpressed, and suspect that behind the technological optimism and sales pitches of precision agriculture there's nothing more than corporate control and surveillance. According to social scientists Steven Wolf of the University of California The University of California has a combined student body of more than 191,000 students, over 1,340,000 living alumni, and a combined systemwide and campus endowment of just over $7.3 billion (8th largest in the United States). and Fred Buttel of the University of Wisconsin, "Precision farming has less to do with mitigating agricultural pollution than with advancing industrial modes of production." Hope Shand, research director of the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, warns that precision agriculture "is about commodification Commodification (or commoditization) is the transformation of what is normally a non-commodity into a commodity, or, in other words, to assign value. As the word commodity has distinct meanings in business and in Marxist theory, commodification and control of information, and it is among the high-tech tools that are driving the industrialization industrialization Process of converting to a socioeconomic order in which industry is dominant. The changes that took place in Britain during the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th century led the way for the early industrializing nations of western Europe and of agriculture, the loss of local farm knowledge and the erosion of farmers' rights" Still, some hard-pressed farmers undoubtedly consider precision agriculture a useful tool. Whether precision agriculture will be a boon for struggling family farms and organic agriculture or an extension of corporate agriculture will probably depend on how it's applied. CONTACT: Precision Agriculture Center, (612)625-3125, www.precision.agri.umn.edu. |
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