French engineer Christophe Millot (L) and manufacturer Guy Julien stand with the Wall-Ye prototype, a robot designed to prune vines, in the Pouilly Fuisse vineyard during a press presentation near Macon October 12, 2012. The 50 by 60 centimetre robot, with four wheels and two metal arms, has six web cameras and a GPS and can roll between grapevines, test the soil and check the grapes. REUTERS/Robert Pratta
Farm Robots Ready to Fill Britain's Post-EU Labor Shortage
A new generation of farm robots is being readied to plug a labor shortage on Britain’s farms that may soon be exacerbated by Brexit. Farmers will be reluctant to invest in robots until they are convinced they are economical, but some robots have already become skilled weeders, using a sensor to identify a plant and then hoe all around it, and carriers, using trays to take strawberry plants to human pickers in vast fields.
How US Rice Farmers Could Slash Their Emissions (and Costs)
Defying the common practice of constantly flooding fields—which creates methane and makes rice the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases among US crops—Arkansas rice farmer Dan Hooks experimented for three years with a low-water technique on 500 acres of rice. Turns out, when he allows the crop to dry out before irrigating again, he’s cut water usage in half and saved money without hurting yield.
Low-Income Tool Helps Improve Global Nutrition, Boost Farmers’ Income
The Horticulture Innovation Lab team at UC Davis is currently working with organizations in Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia, Bangladesh, and Guinea to test the DryCard—a tool which simplifies food drying processes—with farmers and others who handle dried foods along the supply chain. Researchers envision local opportunities for entrepreneurs in developing countries to manufacture and market DryCards, to help make this tool more widely available for farmers to use.
‘Seed’ Capital Takes On New Meaning as Farms Go Digital
Farmers Business Network (FBN) is a start-up that allows farmers access to the combined data of its 3,500 members for annual $600 membership fee, and sells agricultural inputs online to compete with local branches of large farm stores. Before FBN, farmers had limited understanding of how changing agricultural inputs and practices could affect their yields. Now the data can be aggregated anonymously, analyzed, and then shared.