Cultivating futures BY JAKE POINIER Golden State leverages tech to reshape farming WHEN THE CONCEPT of precision agriculture took off in the mid-1990s, there was literal rocket science involved: a partnership between John Deere and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made it possible to incorporate GPS in yield mapping and tractor guidance. Later advances were developed by John Deere in conjunction with Stanford University, using real-time kinematic (RTK) GPS to increase accuracy down to centimeters.
Today, those technologies are used far beyond monitoring yields and self-steering tractors, for tasks from soil mapping and variable-rate input applications to scouting fields and monitoring livestock. Increased geographical accuracy offers the promise of saving on labor, fuel and water usage; reducing soil compaction; and improving profits—while making agriculture more sustainable and mitigating its carbon footprint. California’s leadership in both the agriculture and high-tech sectors offers fertile ground for advancing the future of ag-tech—not to mention $5.3 billion in venture capital poured into the state’s AgriFoodTech startups in 2021. According to the 2023 USDA Technology Use report, however, adoption of high-tech practices has a way to go. A survey of 14,000 U.S. agricultural operations found that only 27% used precision
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IN YOUR CORNER ISSUE 18 | 2024
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