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Improve Your Farm’s Productivity with These 8 Technologies

author-img By Subhasree Nag 5 Mins Read December 10, 2019 Last Updated on: December 10th, 2024

Farm

For years, Aussie farmers have been finding innovative solutions to improve their yield and make huge profits. A big part of their success can be directly attributed to their use of new farming technology, which increases productivity using minimal resources at the quickest possible time.

For one, farmers all over the country have been extensively using hydraulic equipment such as tractors, skid steers, seeders, and planters. Fortunately, there are companies in Australia that offer complete hydraulic kits and lube equipment to ensure that every piece of hydraulic equipment for sale will stay in great shape.

Here are other farm technologies that you should use to improve your farm’s earning potential:

Water and soil sensors

Water and soil sensors

Today, water and soil sensors are among the best farm technologies that you can buy for a few hundred dollars. These sensors will allow you to accurately gauge nitrogen and moisture levels and help you to decide when it’s already time to apply fertilizers or when to irrigate the fields.

In short, they remove the guesswork from the equation, make farm processes more efficient, and guarantee a lower carbon footprint.

Telematics

Telematics allows you to use your smartphone to see where your farm equipment is, how many tons of crops have been harvested, and whether your hydraulic farm equipment might break down soon. These are very powerful pieces of information that could allow farm owners like you to make the right decisions and ensure more efficient operations. This way, you can increase yields, minimize losses, and perform maintenance works on high-priced farm equipment to keep them running like new.

Indoor Vertica Farming

Indoor Vertica Farming

The average yield of rice per hectare is between three and six tonnes. However, farmers don’t have to face this limitation when using indoor vertical farming. This Indoor vertical farming grows farm produce stacked above one another in a closed and controlled environment. The technology uses growing shelves mounted vertically to increase crop yield in limited spaces. Quite often, the shelves don’t require soil—they’re either hydroponic or aeroponic:

  • Hydroponics is a gardening practice that grows plants in water and nutrient solutions.
  • Aeroponics suspends the roots of the crops in the air, with emitters intermittently spraying them with water and nutrients.

Indoor vertical farms enable growers to control variables such as light, temperature, water, and sometimes, carbon dioxide levels, allowing them to get healthier and bigger yields.

Biometric identifier

There are several types of biometric identifiers that are commonly used on farm animals. They include DNA, nose prints, and RVP or Retinal Vascular Patterns. Nose prints are primarily used on junior animals while DNA can be used to match young animals with their parents, much like in humans. Finally, RVP is used to identify a single animal through the unique blood vessel pattern found behind the eyes.

Of these three, RVP is said to be the most cost-efficient with the best benefits to boot, as it can track individual animals in real-time and even serve as a tamper-proof means of identifying them. You may try all three or just pick the one that best serves your specific farm requirements.

Laser Scarecrows

Pesky birds or rodents can be a menace to growing crops in an open field. In the past, farmers relied on traditional scarecrows to ward off hungry invaders. But today, farm owners and managers are turning to high-tech devices with motion sensors to keep birds from pillaging crops.

After discovering that birds are sensitive to the color green, a researcher from the University of Rhode Island helped design a laser scarecrow, which projects green laser light. The light isn’t visible to humans in sunlight, but it can shoot 600 feet across a field to startle birds before destroying crops.

Early tests with laser scarecrows found that the devices can minimize crop damage by reducing the bird population around farmlands by up to 70% to 90%.

Hyper precision technologies

Hyper precision technologies, such as RTK navigation system, allow for accurate farm processes like seeding and fertilization. Such technologies technically eliminate wild guesses and replace them with fine-tuned applications and farm machinery that help conserve resources, increase yields, and boost profits.

Water Management Technology

Water Management Technology

Irrigation is a vital method of providing water to drylands that usually have insufficient rainfall in order to make them arable. However, while this is a crucial aspect of farming today, many farmers still irrigate their fields with wasteful amounts of water the same way the Mesopotamians did over 4,000 years ago.

Besides wasting over two-thirds of the water, flood irrigation can overwater plants, affecting their growth. It could also carry excess fertilizers into streams and lakes, contaminating freshwater sources.

Innovation and technology in agriculture offer farmers more sustainable ways to provide sufficient water to plants. For instance, N-Drip, a micro drip irrigation system, allows water to slowly drip to plants’ roots, creating the right environment for crops to thrive. The technology reduces water usage by up to 50% and improves crop quality.

Agbots

Agbots

Agricultural robots or agbots are futuristic farm helpers that promise to take the agriculture sector by storm just by their sheer cool factor. Agbots can be programmed to automatically harvest crops, plow the soil, remove weeds, and irrigate the fields. If you have the money to burn or if you like to explore really futuristic farming technologies, then you can’t get anything better than these cool robots.

In the highly competitive and constantly evolving agriculture sector, those who have the courage have the best chance of thriving. These five technological innovations can help your farm reach its full earning potential.

Wrapping Up!

In an age where environmental concerns and climate change fears are at an all-time high, sustainable farming is a hotbed issue.

Our population is growing, and increasing shortages of land and water pose a significant threat to the longevity of the human race as we know it. But while many politicians stall and deflect, agriculture technology startups are busy taking action.

From advancements in precision agriculture to farm automation, genetics, and water management tech, innovations in agriculture technology provide the means of smarter, safer, more productive farming.

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Subhasree Nag

A self-proclaimed Swiftian, Instagram-holic, and blogger, Subhasree eats, breathes, and sleeps pop culture. When she is not imagining dates with Iron Man on Stark Tower (yes, she has the biggest crush on RDJ, which she won’t admit), she can be seen tweeting about the latest trends. Always the first one to break viral news, Subhasree is addicted to social media, and leaves out no opportunity of blogging about the same. She is our go-to source for the latest algorithm updates and our resident editor.

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