Monsanto Co. and other companies are racing to roll out"prescriptive planting" technology to farmers across the U.S.,according to a recent article in the Wall StreetJournal by Jacob Bunge.
|Some farmers worry their data might be sold to commoditiestraders, wind up in the hands of rival farmers or give moreleverage to giant seed companies that are among the mostenthusiastic sellers of data-driven planting advice, Lungewrites. The companies vow not to misuse theinformation.
|Many tractors and combines already are guided by GlobalPositioning System satellites that plant ever-straighter rows whilefarmers, freed from steering, monitor progress on iPads and othertablet computers now common in tractor cabs. The same machinerycollects data on crops and soil.
Sellers of prescriptive-plantingtechnology want to accelerate, streamline and combine all thosedata with their highly detailed records on historic weatherpatterns, topography and crop performance. The world's biggest seed company,Monsanto, estimates that data-driven planting advice to farmerscould increase world-wide crop production by about $20 billion ayear, or about one-third the value of last year's U.S. corn crop. For more information, read"Big Data Comes to the Farm" at the Wall StreetJournal.Want to continue reading?
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