Agriculture
fromFortune
1 day agoU.S. wheat crops wither, herds thin as spring drought deepens | Fortune
Farmers in the Great Plains face severe drought, threatening winter wheat harvests and increasing costs for cattle feed.
Data-driven approaches in livestock health management can significantly enhance decision-making processes, leading to improved animal welfare and productivity in the agriculture sector.
We created Earth in Action to provide a lens into what's happening on our planet, as it happens. Whether it's something typical, like the current air temperature, or an extreme event like a major dust storm, we wanted to provide an opportunity for people to see them.
Bayer is supplementing human security patrols around its 8,000 acre Hawaiian corn farm with robotic security dogs, supplied by the tech firm Asylon. The Asylon dogs are meant to guard the company's precious maize from vandals, wildfires, wild fauna, and other hazards around the clock.
While humans have assembled a lot of weather data, flash floods are too short-lived and localized to be measured comprehensively, the way the temperature or even river flows are monitored over time. That data gap means that deep learning models, which are increasingly capable of forecasting the weather, aren't able to predict flash floods.
"I saw the announcement that one of America's most enduring publications was set to close," Konrad said, "and it felt wrong to stand by while an irreplaceable piece of our national heritage disappeared."
Weather impacts sales. Every retailer knows it. But for most, the likelihood that it might rain, snow, or sleet on the third of March somewhere in the Midwest is rarely used. Vendors such as Weather Trends have offered accurate, long-range forecasts for more than 20 years. But the opportunity is not predicting the weather; it's knowing what to do with the data. AI might change that.
Every year, poor communication and siloed data bleed companies of productivity and profit. Research shows U.S. businesses lose up to $1.2 trillion annually to ineffective communication, that's about $12,506 per employee per year. This stems from breakdowns that waste an average of 7.47 hours per employee each week on miscommunications. The damage isn't only interpersonal; it's structural. Disconnected and fragmented data systems mean that employees spend around 12 hours per week just searching for information trapped in those silos.
"The awesome thing with pulse crops is no nitrogen needs... not having to put any nitrogen on a pulse crop is a great starting point," he says, noting that this allows growers to not only meet PKS requirements but, in some cases, build soil fertility for the rotation.
It can drive through the field and look at every square inch. We really honed our craft on model performance and detection with rocks, and now we've transitioned that into weeds. The robot uses a boom-mounted camera system to capture detailed imagery across the field. With eight cameras operating at 1 millimetre resolution, TerraScout can generate billions of data points per acre, allowing it to identify specific objects, including individual weeds.
The input planning calculator is a robust tool that can help farmers and agronomists better understand on-farm finances while helping uncover which crops make the most sense to plant from a cost perspective. By inputting key on-farm financial and agronomic data, including seed and agronomy service costs, growers can compare each crop on their farm and explore their true cost of production.
Profitability in the cattle business often hinges on understanding the real cost of production, something that can be difficult to pin down when labour, land, and opportunity costs aren't always clearly accounted for.
At its core, GrainFox really helps producers and agri businesses make clear, more confident grain marketing decisions. Instead of reacting to the hot headlines of the day or relying on that gut feel, they have a structured plan that really helps guide them throughout the whole sales year.
You can go onto your cloud account either through the iPad or your desktop computer and pre-plan all your jobs... when your hired man goes into the field he can just pick the job... and then hit start and you can go.
Total wheat area is expected to dip 1.1% to 26.7 million acres in Canada. I have been hearing many growers say they like the idea of wheat's low input requirements, but market fundamentals are giving them pause when it comes to aggressively increasing acres.
"I've been with Syngenta for 28 years," Ramachandran says, noting that early travels across Canada shaped his passion for seed care. "What really stood out to me is seeing firsthand the passion, the resilience and the impact the growers made." Those experiences, combined with Canada's short growing season, continue to guide his work. "Everything that we have done... is around addressing those challenges, and how do we create solutions that are fit for purpose, for Canadian growers?"
Outside, it's an overcast and blustery February day in Kent hardly the ideal conditions for growing tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. Yet inside the enormous glasshouses run by grower Thanet Earth, the climate has been optimised to a humid 20C, perfect for the regimented rows of small pepper plants poking out of raised trays. Growing fresh produce indoors in the south of England year-round requires plenty of energy to provide light, warmth and carbon dioxide.