Stryker—Technology is advancing all the time, even in the agricultural sector.
Scott Shearer, professor and chair of the Department of Food, Agriculture, and Biotechnology at Ohio State University, says the future of agricultural technology lies in automation and drones.
His comments were made Friday at the Ohio Soybean Association field day hosted by Goebel Farms in Springfield Township, just outside Stryker. The athletic meet was held at the farm of Rusty Goebel, vice president of the association.
Automation is a big emerging market for agriculture and is set to save farmers both in labor and supply.
For example, John Deere recently introduced a fully autonomous 8R tractor, while Raven Industries also has an autonomous farming platform called DOT.
“Cooperatives in South Dakota use DOT on top of the manure bed. We are doing it,” said Shearer. “They started looking at the quality of the application from this fully automated machine and compared it to a human operated machine. was there.”
The cooperative ran autonomous machines because it could not find anyone qualified to work on tractors, even though there were vacancies, he added.
It also costs a lot less, around 25 cents per horsepower for a regular tractor and 7 cents per horsepower for an autonomous tractor.
Drones are also growing in popularity for a variety of applications. One drone can carry 8 gallons of spray mixture.
“My understanding is that they can fly that drone, load it with new batteries, fill it with eight gallons of the spray mixture, and put it back in the air very quickly.” We get applications on 16 to 20 acres an hour with drones.”
Drones with a payload capacity of 600 pounds are being developed, and the technology just keeps getting better, he said.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reaching a stage where it can also be used in agricultural applications, such as John Deere’s recently introduced sea and spray technology.
According to Shearer, the technology is a fogger with 32 cameras and eight processors.
“When they go through a field, they distinguish between weeds and crops and turn on the spray nozzles only to spray the weeds,” he said. You can see it decrease.”
Later in the day, Shearer showed field day folks a camera-equipped drone with a similar processor for distinguishing between crops and weeds. The demonstration was calibrated for soybeans and was slightly off because there was only a test cornfield nearby.
As a result, the camera simply classified all the corn as weed, but hopefully got the point across.
Of course, all this technology means farmers will need a good internet connection, which is hard to come by in rural areas.
With various bills passed at the federal level, the county will get funding to expand its infrastructure, including internet capabilities, and has already received the money, Shearer said.
One of the things the county is doing is laying fiber optic cables. It is necessary, but the question arises how to connect the tractor to the fiber optics.
“It could be a private 5G network,” said Shearer. “Some of this issue, I think, will definitely be resolved within five to ten years.”
This technology has led to a shift to smaller equipment and fewer people in the literal sector of agriculture.
Even though fewer people are needed, Shearer expects more farm jobs to shift to the service sector.
“There will be more services offered as automation increases,” he said. “They will have different jobs, but they will probably have better paying jobs.”
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