Posted on by Miguel Granier

Big Data on the Farm

Big Data and Big Agriculture by Adam Lesser on Gigaom

Gigaom, the blog focused on emerging technologies, is tuned into the influence of big data in agriculture.  The research arm has released a new report reviewing a variety of data driven services and their potential value-add for agribusiness.

Key findings include:

  • There will be more incentives to leverage new technology to increase crop yields and manage risk as global population increases, environment volatility grows and petroleum dependent agricultures is increasingly sensitive to fossil fuel pricing,
  • Opportunities for big data applications in agriculture include benchmarking, sensor deployment and analytics
  • Key challenges for companies entering the market include proving the effectiveness of data centric technologies to improve yield as well as building trust with farmers.

 Today’s Farm Requires Access to Wireless Broadband by Jonathan Adelstein on Farm Industry News

There have been many improvements in agriculture over the years. Perhaps one of the biggest and most impactful new developments is that the “Internet of Things” now includes “Farm Things”. Much of today’s agriculture equipment depends on access to wireless networks and this broadband-powered farm equipment along with laptops, and other devices are crucial in efficient farm management.

Wireless services such as John Deere’s JDLink enable farmers to monitor the productivity and maintenance of machines while they’re operating, and allow them to assess their effectiveness after use and improve their productivity. The wireless data transfer technology also enables farmers to access their data from anywhere, making management simple and convenient.

All these benefits, however, rely on the continued improvement and expansion of our wireless networks. This requires building next-generation wireless infrastructure to bridge the wireless gap and meet the high demand for data use.

Cropin – Transforming Agribusiness Sector by Leveraging ICT on ProductNation

Krishna Kumar is the CEO of Invested Development’s portfolio company, Cropin, one of the leading players in the emerging agriculture technology sector. CropIn leverages advances in information technology and applies it to the agriculture in the form of cloud-based farm management solutions. The CropIn team is working on creating a traceable and predictable  food supply chain by building a network of ERP and Business Intelligence solutions that stakeholders can use to monitor and communicate with farmers on the field. Read the full interview in which Krishna shares his journey and perspectives on the agribusiness sector.

 The Big Data Bounty: U.S. Startups Challenge Agribusiness Giants by Karl Plume on The Globe and Mail

As opportunities for Big Data have surfaced in the agribusiness sector, big agriculture companies such as Monsanto and John Deere have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on technologies that use detailed data on soil type, seed variety, and weather to help farmers cut costs and increase yields. As the ag tech space heats up, a number of small tech startups are launching products giving their bigger counterparts a run for their money. These products are powered by many of the same data sources, particularly those that are freely available such as the National Weather Service and Google Maps. They can also access data gathered by farm machines and transferred wirelessly to the cloud.

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