Precision Agriculture Platforms Promise to Bring Major Advances in Seed Selection
Plagued by tight profit margins amid climate change, a volatile global trade environment, falling commodity prices, and increases in costs for seed, fertilizer, and chemicals, U.S. farmers face a challenging landscape, with virtually no margin for error, writes Ofir Schlam at PrecisionAg. That makes proper seed selection all the more paramount.
Seed selection is one of the most important management decisions growers make on a regular basis. What crop should I plant? What hybrid should I select? In answering these questions, growers need to consider many factors including market prices, yield potential, disease and pest resistance, growing season length, and high-value quality traits, among others.
Quality seed selection is critical to increasing yields, combating pests, and heading off diseases. And while it’s hardly news that seed quality matters – seed physiology dates to the genesis of agriculture in 10,000 BCE – precision agriculture and other transformative ag-tech solutions promise to bring major new advances in selecting the best seeds for specific crops. Harnessing these new technologies, farmers can monitor soil, weather, local diseases, and more – generating the sophisticated insights necessary for farmers to increase yields, lower costs, and feed a growing global population.
The Seeds of a New Agricultural Revolution
As biotech has infused farming and changed the seed production process, seed has been one of the fastest-growing expenses for farmers in recent decades. Corn seed costs alone have surged an estimated 300% since the mid-1990s.
But while the rise of agrochemicals and genetically modified crops have brought substantial benefits for farmers, the current upsurge of digital agriculture may ultimately prove the most significant revolution to transform agriculture, as a recent EY analysis argues. Precision farming solutions are enabling farmers to harness the benefits of technologies like artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), and data analytics to create new efficiencies and unleash new value in agriculture.
While the changes ushered in by digital agriculture will affect every stage of the farming value chain, farmers stand to gain especially big when it comes to seed selection.
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