Can Precision Agriculture Really Help Growers Know Their Crops Better?
Precision agriculture can be a nebulous term for many growers, but at its core, it’s just about getting a more accurate picture of what’s going on so you can farm accordingly, writes David Eddy at Growing Produce. Being able to pinpoint weak spots in your orchard and correcting them, for example, is one way to give your yields of target fruit a boost.
Being precise requires more data. In fruit and nut growing, that means taking pictures — lots of them. However, the companies selling precision agriculture products collect those images in different ways, even on different aspects of the orchard.
In talking with researchers, three companies stand out in this arena for their distinct approaches: FruitScout, Green Atlas, and Hectre. All started on apples, though since then all have branched out into other fruit and nut crops.
Two of the three companies are from “Down Under,” which is not really a surprise as many of the precision agriculture companies were founded outside the U.S., in large part because of the old saying, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” Many countries around the world faced labor problems years ago, well before U.S. growers began acutely feeling shortages, and began more intensively concentrating on mechanizing fruit growing to cut burgeoning labor costs and improve profits.
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