agricultural technology

Lightweight drones "can monitor crop health in real time for farmers who are trying to manage farms that are hundreds or even thousands of acres," says the White House in hailing the release of U.S. ground rules for commercial use of the aircraft.

Thanks to sensors and computer control of water and nutrients, technologically advanced growers like California almond farmer Tom Rogers are leaders in what The Economist calls "smart farming."

A common job for cowboys — for some, it's an all-day duty — is riding through herds to check on cattle health. With labor getting harder to find, Salah Sukkarieh, an Australian professor of robots, is developing a solar- and electric-powered four-wheel robot to handle the work, reports the Washington Post.

A Dutch company, Rometron, has married infrared sensors and digital controls for "spot" spraying of weedkiller on agricultural equipment up to 110 feet wide.

David Simmons was the first dairy farmer in Newfoundland to install a robotic milking parlor for this cattle. He "is just one of many who are turning to cutting edge technology" to monitor livestock health, says the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Higher agricultural productivity is a key to meeting growing global demand for food, writes Yangxuan Liu, a doctoral candidate in agricultural economics at Purdue, in a blog on how improved technology could help small-scale farmers and the high-value crops they often grow.

Precision agriculture and big data are familiar concepts in the world of farming. Now, the "Internet of Things" - devices with sensors that transmit data and respond to instructions via a digital network - is being sized up for agriculture.

With plantings on the decline and fewer farmworkers available, two mechanical harvesters are being tested on the chile pepper crop in New Mexico, says the Associated Press.

The mechanical tomato harvester, developed at UC-Davis, ranks as "a genuine breakthrough in the way that scientists thought about agricultural development," writes Ildi Carlisle-Cummins at Civil Eats.

The administration launched an update of its multi-agency system of regulating food and agricultural biotechnology with a goal of writing the new version of its "coordinated framework" by July 2016.

Agriculture is far ahead of the rest of the country in development and use of driver-less technology, says the Washington Post.

A project at UC-Davis aims to develop a robotic cultivator that can do the equivalent of hand weeding, excising weeds as they sprout among rows of newly emerged crops.

"One of the best-known trends in American agriculture is the aging farmer," writes David Widmar at the blog Agricultural Economic Insights, suggesting one result will be increased concentration of farmland ownership.

At the end of annual trade consultations, officials from China and the United States say they will give attention to their approval processes for genetically engineered crops, said Reuters.

With 20,000 acres, Indiana farmer Kip Tom "harvests the staples of modern agriculture: seed corn, feed corn, soybeans and data," says the New York Times.

A dozen farm groups and agribusinesses agreed on a 10 principles for data privacy and security in the emerging field of agricultural Big Data. The agreement follows months of discussions.

The big questions for the emerging Big Data era in agriculture will be resolved in the next couple of years, a panel of experts said on Tuesday, although none suggested the likely results.

Farmers in the top corn, wheat, soybean, and hog states are twice as likely as farmers in smaller-volume states to use precision agriculture practices, such as GPS guidance, said the USDA’s farm computer report on Thursday. Usage often topped 50 percent in the top row-crop states, while the U.S. average was just 27 percent.