As with the rest of the world, the agricultural industry is in a state of flux. With technology helping to speed up processes, farms are modernizing across the world. Meanwhile, research and development projects are reaping returns that are helping farms boost their yield, making the most of their land and livestock. Against this backdrop, farms are preparing for a changing climate and making efforts to reduce their use of herbicides and pesticides. Here’s a quick overview of the three ways farms are changing in the modern era.
Going Greener
Farms are naturally places where the environment is seen as important. Land treated poorly will return a lower yield and could damage a farm’s earnings, so farmers have long been careful to maintain their land and to avoid its degradation. But with the new-found pressure to be kinder to the environment, farmers and land-owners are opting for increasingly green methods in their work.
Some of these include engaging with modern formulas to help get the most out of their seeds and animals. Expertly concocted plant-based animal feed, for instance, is being fed to animals instead of feeds that may previously have contained chemicals deemed unhealthy. Farmers are also getting wise to the ways in which they can reduce their use of fertilizers and pesticides, using techniques from modern research to manage their crops in a less polluting fashion.
New Technology
There are swathes of farms across the world that have upgraded their technology in the past couple of years in light of new innovations in the agricultural sector. From self-driving tractors that can be programmed to plow fields on their own, to data-processing systems that predict weather events, the digital world is interacting with that of farming in novel and exciting ways.
The obvious benefit of many of these innovations is that they give a farmer confidence and security. If you have a better grasp of the weather, you’ll be able to better predict when you might need to intervene in your fields. But, even more excitingly, with more and more data analysts and machine learning being used on farms, the upshot of new technologies is the eventual automation of many farming processes.
Automated Farms
From the rooftops of Singapore to the old bomb shelters of South London, automated farms are regarded as the not-so-distant future solutions. Liberating farmers from much of the manual labor they’ve performed for years, these farms are being designed to plant, water and feed crops optimally thought their lifespan – nurturing healthier, larger plants.
These innovations may be some years off hitting farmsteads near you. The research is certainly still in the experimental phase. But with hundreds of millions of dollars being devoted to such projects each year, it’s clear that this is the direction of travel in the world of farming. Watch this space to see where the next great automated farm might pop up in your region.
In a modernizing world facing new challenges, farmers and farms are adapting. This article evidences three key ways that farms are changing with the times, delivering higher productivity while remaining green.