Emily Buck, Ph.D., who farms nearly 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans and raises Southdown sheep at her farm near Columbus, Ohio. Buck is one of USFRA’s Faces of Farming & Ranching .
Image courtesy Emily Buck
Emily Buck, Ph.D., who farms nearly 1,000 acres of corn and soybeans and raises Southdown sheep at her farm near Columbus, Ohio. Buck is one of USFRA’s Faces of Farming & Ranching.
The focus on sustainability in farming and food production is critical now and for future generations. According to a report in 2016 by the World Bank, 800 million people go to bed hungry each night which creates a growing need for a sustainable food system for global food provisions. Technology - sensors, drones, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) - are playing an increasingly pivotal role in new agriculture.
Take family farmer, Emily Buck who's been using smart farming practices to sustain the water, land and air, while growing and growing soybeans, corn and wheat and raising Southdown sheep on her 1,000 acre farm in Ohio. Buck's farm uses a number of smart tech tools, everything from GPS technology to grid and monitor their lots, aerial applications and planting to field monitoring via drones and mobile apps for information on seeds and crop growth.
Because of the farm's proximity to Lake Erie and the Mississippi River watersheds that surround her fields, Buck set aside 38 acres of wetlands as part of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) which is a land conservation program focused on improving water quality and soil erosion prevention. Buck's CRP land fosters a healthy wildlife and natural pollinators habitat and acts as a refuge for river overflow. In 2009, Buck's farm became a national model for sustainability and was awarded a National Conservation Award by the American Soybean Association. In 2013, Buck was awarded the Excellence in Agriculture Award by the Ohio Farm Bureau.
 
But sustainability doesn't happen over night and technology plays a big role. Buck says her farm uses GPS technology on every tractor which monitors the precise use of water and other elements down to each acre.
"Most farmers look at two to three acres when they use fertilizers and pesticides," said Buck.  " We use grid soil sampling down to the acre in an effort to only use what we have to where we have to on our fields."
 
Buck's farm grows cover crops and GMO corn and soybeans, while using no-till practices to cultivate healthy soil. In their soil protection practices, Buck has used aerial applications of pesticides and aerial planting of cover crops.
"It is important to us that we cross the fields with our equipment as little as we can to avoid soil compaction," said Buck. " We have a drone that we use over the field to monitor crops over the summer. We try and dabble in apps too, we even use a seed app.
But on the other side of a family farmer like Buck, is the legacy agriculture company, New Holland. The company has been making agriculture machinery since 1895.
Today the company also has a software component and is working with DroneDeploy to create the new data offering called PLM Drone Data Management. The offering is designed to help farmers collect real-time aerial data mapping of their crops and fields. The aerial imagery helps expose opportunity in fields such as identification of heavy compaction areas, mitigation of crop health issues and improvement of yields.
The Drone powered by New Hollands PLM System
Image courtesy of CNH Industrial America LLC
Drone technology powered by New Holland's drone data system.
Drones in particular have the potential to spray crops more efficiently or bolster pollination.Drones can fly at different heights for improved accuracy in crop spraying which means better application of fertilizers. According to the Federal Aviation (FAA) Department, there's been an uptake of drone registation, 100,000 in the past three months and in the past 15 months, around 770,000 drone owners have registered to fly with the FAA.
 
Maps from these drones show a variety of crop and soil situations and can detect health plant problems, compile automated plant count reports of entire fields, annotated crop health maps which help farmers with insurance requests and recoup crop losses and natural disaster assessment and clean up.
“New Holland has always been driven to provide its customers with the tools they need to be successful. The addition of drones is an integral part of our Precision Land Management solution, and now, with our PLM Drone Data offering, customers can take full advantage of same-day data collection and analysis,” said Bret Lieberman, VP, New Holland North America. “This up-to-date information allows customers to make the best decisions possible while also providing a quick ROI."
 
As consumers, we've been quick to use our mobile devices and smart tech to live a healther, safer and more connected lifestyle - monitoring our thermosats, securing our homes and tracking our health. The migration of these technologies we use in our everyday lives as tools for farmers to grow crops more efficiently and create sustainable farms is the model for a new generation of farmers.
“Just as we use cell phones and smart cars to communicate more effectively and live better, smart farming technologies enable farmers to produce crops more sustainably, with less inputs and less impact on the environment,"said Buck. "This allows us to farm in a way that is immensely better for the world than our grandparents did 50 years ago.”